There is
by AntaresPromise
Summary: Katsuki Yuuri. 26. M.D. After years of studying, writing big, expensive exams, Yuuri introduced himself as Dr. Katsuki for the first time. Residency opened more cans of worms than he ever prepared for, along with one pleasant surprise: Dr. Victor Nikiforov.
1. Chapter 1: Murphy's Law

**Disclaimer:** all names and events in this story are fictional  & I do not own the characters from Yuri on ice.

 **Chapter 1: Murphy's Law**

Those in the medical field knew, July was the worst possible month to be sick and admitted to the hospital. The new doctors start their residency training this month.

Yuuri's brand new stiff white coat still fell past his knees, it felt too long. Two weeks ago he was still a student in a short white coat. He transformed from a shy medical student named Yuuri to Dr. Katsuki overnight.

For the first time he introduced himself as a doctor. For the first time instead of the sympathetic learner handing the patient the tissue box, he had to break the news that his patient in her forties had cancer.

In all honesty, he felt like an imposter in a doctor's costume.

He saw the unit clerk snickering as he frantically pressed the buttons hoping to make the beeping of his pager go away but it only grew louder.

The soul piercing beeping started again.

He had been running all morning, rounding on patients, writing notes. Rounding meant waking the patients at five am, apologizing and to examine them while they were still groggy. The progress notes had to be complete before the attending physician, the full fledged doctor (and boss) showed up at nine am.

Still tired from his anxiety and not being able to sleep the night before and jittery from the caffeine, he scrambled to find the nearest phone.

Yuuri bit his lips, it tasted like coffee. His white coat was also impregnated with its intoxicating aroma. In fact, every time he took a piss, it also smelled like coffee. His fingers were clammy, leaving wet prints on the black handle of the phone, he dialed the nurse's number. Suddenly he wondered if he wore enough deodorant this morning.

"This is Yuri from team D," he pulled out his patient list from his pocket.

"Patient in room 501 is unresponsive," said the unsettled voice on the other side, "we called a rapid response."

"On my way," _Shit,_ Yuri silently swore and rummaged through his notes about that patient. Heart failure, came in with chest pain, anemic, diabetic who took his insulin half of the time. A 'rapid response' is when a patient on the edge of deteriorating, a team of predesignated doctors would be called upon to evaluate and stabilize the patient. His pace sped up. On his way there he dialed Victor's phone number. Victor was two years his senior and in his final year of residency training before becoming a full fledged doctor.

Victor didn't pick up for some reason.

Slowly everything he learned from medical school flew straight out of the window. He dialed Victor's number again, as he closed his eyes and imagined the worst. The algorithm of running a code flashed before his mind. A code is called when there is no pulse. P _ulseless cardiac arrest, shock not indicated...compression, epinephrine, compression, epinephrine...I hope this would not turn into a code..._

He took a deep breath, felt heat rushing towards his face and the adrenaline sharpened his senses as he stumbled into the chaos. _Victor, where are you._

Two nurses were already switching places and compressing the patient's chest which was shaved with the razor from the code cart to allow the defibrillator pads to stick. The patient's arm flailed with the rhythm of compressions as his chest recoiled. Littered on the ground, wrappers from the IV kit and bloodied gauze. The patient's wife's face was pale as ghost. She pressed her back against the sterile white wall with her palm covering her mouth.

All eyes were on him as the first doctor on the scene. His heart sank as this was no longer a rapid response but a full blown code blue. His eyes met one of the nurses he knew, Chris, who pressed his lips together and nodded.

Yuuri was taken aback for a split second as if standing in the eye of the storm in response to Chris's look that said: _I believe in you._ His heart was jammed into his throat, with hot blood pulsating in his ears, "let's give the epi." He estimated two minutes of chest compressions had passed.

"Pushing the epi," with a swift motion Chris echoed closing the loop of communication.

"Pulse check," Yuuri refused to allow his voice to crack before the patient's family. The algorithm now crystallized before his eyes of the next step. He watched the heart monitor.

"No pulse," Chris methodically switched places with Sara, in her teal scrubs with beads of perspiration on her forehead.

Still nothing.

The patient's wife let out a wail, the nurse manager placed one hand on her shoulder and softly asked if she wanted to be somewhere else. She shook her head, "we...don't have any children, he is...all that I have."

 _Victor, where are you._ One more round of compression without response. Yuuri stared at the flat green line on the cardiac monitor and sighed, "one more epi." He wiped the cold sweat from his face. He clutched his phone with his hand until his fingertips turned white. _Victor..._

Then he heard footsteps behind him, his heart leapt and skipped a beat. Victor stepped next to him, his eyes unfazed. Yuuri wasn't sure if the adrenaline rush was making his sense of smell sharper. Victor's scent felt familiar, like the pine forest after the rain. A rush of relief washed over him.

"How many rounds?" Victor's voice calm like the surface of a serene lake untouched by the breeze.

"Three so far," Yuuri's dark brown eyes met his aquamarine orbs, "you want to take over?" Then he turned to face the team, "one more epi." His voice stronger this time. He knew if he fell or stumbled, Victor would be there. Victor had that kind of effect on people.

Victor studied the heart rhythm monitor monitor, "carry on, I am right here."

Somehow part of Yuuri's fear melted away. He felt the warmth from his tall confident senior resident next to him. He lost track of time as the intensive care unit team of doctors trailed by medical students and residents filled the room, as the anesthesia attending and respiratory therapist joined them.

Five...ten...fifteen rounds of CPR later, Chris's back was drenched in sweat. His muscles straining through the sleeve of his scrubs.

"We have a pulse!" Sara exclaimed, as she wiped her face, her dark violet eyes glistening. She was fresh out of nursing school and this was the first real cardiac arrest she had been a part of. She lifted her fingers from the patient's carotids.

"Let's initiate the ROSC protocol..." Yuuri's lips were dry. Victor didn't move a single inch from the place close to him. Finally Yuuri could no longer hear his own heart pounding. Learning the medical terms was similar to a foreign language. Doctors spat out abbreviations left and right. ROSC stands for Return of Spontaneous Circulation.

"Good work, Dr. Katsuki," Victor uncrossed his arms, he flashed a small smile.

Yuuri sighed, blushed and scratched his head as he suddenly became more aware of Victor once again, "it was all...thanks to you." He whispered. He kicked himself inside, _I can't believe I just said something so stupid._

He watched the patient being wheeled out of the room with multiple lines, monitors attached from him and the breathing machine humming and blowing with an artificial rhythm. His fatigue caught up with him, he stared at his watch. It was only 8:53 am.

"You alright? Do you need a minute?" Victor reached out and touched his shoulder.

Yuuri almost jumped from the warmth of his hand. His face again burning because the one person who inspired him to become a doctor in the first place was stood one foot away from him and concerned about his well being. "Yea, I think I am...let's go to rounds." Warmth spread from the pit of his stomach to the rest of his body.

"I'll grab water for you," Victor turned around as his white coat made a soft snapping sound, it was crisp and clean, without pen marks or shades of coffee.

"Thanks," Yuuri mumbled. He touched his own burning cheeks with his cold hands.

* * *

2:25 pm, his stomach growled, the cafeteria was near nearly empty as the workers wearing hairnets started to stow away the soup.

The woman at the deli counter glared at Yuuri apologized as he made his order five minutes before the end of her shift. He grabbed a bag of chips along the way, and an energy drink then swiped his ID at the counter. At least the hospital chipped in for some meals.

He found his friend Phichit glancing out of the window of the hospital sitting by himself on the tall table on the almost empty cafeteria. Phichit had dark circles under his eyes. Like Yuuri, he was also an intern starting his first week.

"Yuuri," his old friend's face lit up as he waved, "you look terrible." Phichit was also another intern. They knew each other since they were six years old. They first met in art class while drawing what they want to be when they grow up. Yuuri drew an astronaut while Phichit scribbled himself in a white coat with stethoscope around his neck.

"You do too," Yuuri climbed onto the high chair.

"How's your morning," Phichit sipped his soda.

"My patient coded," Yuuri realized how hungry he was after he sank his teeth into his sandwich and took the first bite. He still felt dazed from the aftermath of the adrenaline rush.

"Damn, are you alright?" Phichit knew his friend well enough to know that Yuuri wasn't ready to talk about it yet.

Yuuri shrugged.

Phichit took out his phone, and scrolled through Instagram, "I heard Victor doesn't wear his wedding band anymore, and did you know he has sole custody of his kid?"

Yuuri almost chocked for a second, "what?" His friend is the first to know all kinds of gossip, while Yuuri was the last. Even though he was the one who admired Victor from a distance since the beginning, Phichit seemed to know more about Victor's life.

Rumors had been stirring amongst residents when Victor transferred here three months ago from the hospital Phichit refused to say the name of. That hospital was one of the top academic centers in the world and the place Phichit dreamt of training in for residency. Knowledge came naturally for him, Phichit had honors throughout college, and he was the top 1% in medical school. Yet to Yuuri's envy, his friend partied and spent the least amount of time studying. Even Phichit couldn't make it into residency in the hospital where Victor trained from. He was still bitter about it.

Yuuri couldn't help but wonder the reason Victor abandoned the prestige of his past to be transferred to this small hospital in the suburbs.

Yuuri's heart raced, _I can't imagine what he must have gone through, residency itself was...well...residency, on top of that raising a baby on his own._ He noticed since the beginning Victor's smile never reached his eyes. His voice gentle yet confident. He was everything Yuuri aspired to be. He wondered if Victor had friends, family that could help. That must be the reason Victor never showed up to drinks with their colleagues despite Phichit inviting him time and time again.

Then Yuuri's pager rang and he packed up his half eaten sandwich and said goodbye to his old friend.

* * *

The afternoon was as chaotic as the morning, in a different way.

Yuuri's pager won't be quiet.

"Patient is angry that his discharge papers are not ready yet." The nurse sounded annoyed.

"Please her I am working on it right now," Yuuri typed as he held the phone between his shoulder and his cheek, "thanks so much-" The nurse slammed the phone on the other end before he finished.

Yuuri immediately dialed the phone number for the next nurse who paged, "patient says he can't afford the four tabs of antibiotics you sent to the pharmacy treating his pneumonia."

"Ok, I'll speak with social work and keep you posted, thanks," He silenced the phone and opened the "intern survival guide" bounded by plastic coil, distributed by his program to find the social worker's phone number. _Can't afford antibiotics but can afford cigarettes...who am I to judge._ He sighed and dialed for the social worker.

He was paged again because another patient wanted to speak with a doctor, but when he showed up in the patient's room he was thrown out because the patient 'won't talk to an intern'. He sighed and called Victor, who told him that he would take care of it.

* * *

Yuuri punched in the three digit code of the call room for his team and sank into the couch, he needed a moment. He was grateful the call room couch is a hideous shade of dark brown, at least it would hide the coffee stains. He took off his glasses to clean the fingerprints smears with the edge of his white coat as Victor walked in.

Yuuri jumped as he jammed his glasses back on. His heart pounding. _Please please do not recognize me..._ heat rushed towards his face. He pushed the image of _that_ night Phichit teased him mercilessly for out of his mind with desperation. That night when Victor drove him home. That night he didn't remember.

"Sorry, for startling you," Victor glanced at him with his usual smile that was always tinted with a subtle hint of sadness.

"It's-...alright," Yuuri pushed his blue rimmed glasses higher onto the bridge of the nose. He reached towards his bag and pulled out an energy drink. He gulped it down and wiped his lip. From the corner of his eyes he saw Victor sitting on the call room bed and scrolling through his laptop for patient's labs.

"You okay?" Victor paused and gazed at him through his silver locks parted to the side.

"Yea, getting back to work." Yuuri pulled out the wrinkled piece of paper containing the patient list and logged onto the call room computer. The page is covered with his messy scrawl with checkboxes next to them.

Discharge summary, check.

Social work for waiving the antibiotic fee, check.

Ordering labs for the next morning, check.

They worked side by side in silence, until six pm approached, the sun still high in the sky.

"You ready to sign out?" Victor closed his laptop. He was meticulous, his job as senior resident was to check over the interns' work.

Yuuri nodded as they headed to the nursing station to meet the night team. Yuuri had a pounding headache from caffeine withdrawal. The energy drink didn't touch him.

They discussed every patient and the to do list for the night team and headed back to the call room without speaking. The fatigue was finally catching up with him. He still hasn't had a chance to decompress from everything that happened in the morning where he was the first person on the scene when the patient's heart stopped beating. He wondered how the patient was doing now in the intensive care unit. He wondered if there was anything he could have done differently. He wondered if yesterday he missed something leading up to this.

He yawned, his entire body heavy. He wanted nothin more than a hot shower and his bed.

"Sometimes in medicine we could never know, if we did things the right, Yuuri," Victor read his mind, "you did a good job today."

"Thanks," Yuuri's dark eyes met Victor's aquamarine orbs for the very first time. He felt the rush of emotions overflowing all at once. The anxiety of wearing the long white coat yet not knowing what he was doing. The fear of harming patients because of his lack of experience. The guilt and shame of feeling inadequate compared his peers like Phichit.

Yuri had always been polite, apologetic, it was not in his nature to talk back or swear out loud. Victor saw right through him, he closed the call room door, "it's alright Yuri, let it out."

Yuuri took a deep breath, his face reddened facing the man he aspired to be. He was too tired to give a shit whether he looked frazzled of wore enough deodorant. All of his fear, fatigue, anxiety, that slowly built up crystallized into a single word.

"Fuck."

He threw his pager across the room onto the room bed, restraining himself the last second before it flew out of his hand in fear of breaking it and paying fifty dollars he didn't have. The pager bounced from the pillow.

"There you go," this time Victor's smile reached his eyes. Yuuri noticed the tiny wrinkles at the corner of his eyes. Victor clutched his stomach as he couldn't control his laughter, which was infectious as Yuuri joined him. Neither of them knew why this situation was funny, but it was.

Somehow Yuuri felt lighter.

He didn't know, this was the first time Victor laughed in days.

* * *

Victor pushed open the door of his one bedroom apartment, Mila grinned as she greeted him. She was an aspiring writer who escaped to this quiet city by the ocean to work on her manuscripts. In the meantime she picked up part time jobs to make ends meet. Victor hired her to watch over his six month old son during the day. He liked her because she didn't ask questions.

"Shh, he's asleep," Mila gathered her dark blue purse.

Victor nodded, "okay." He whispered, "thanks for your help."

"See you tomorrow," Mila zipped the sides of her black boots up to her ankles. She wore a form fitting blue dress the same colour as her eyes.

Victor locked the door behind her. The hollowness inside him crept in. He walked towards his bedroom, where his son slept peacefully. He was the one reason Victor had to keep on going.

He headed towards the kitchen and opened his cabinets and removed his pillbox. Nobody around could tell that he took multiple antidepressants, because he found it easier to hide behind the calm mask and the fake smile. Victor poured a glass of water as he swallowed his evening dose.

He looked forward to falling asleep and dreaded waking up in the morning. Before he could help it, tears poured out of his eyes onto the ground and his bare feet.

Victor sat on the ground of his kitchen floor and buried his face in his hands.

* * *

 **Author's notes:**

Thank you for reading! I didn't think I would ever write a slice-of-life kind of story, but here you go. This is a special one to me.

An explanation for those of you not familiar with the medical world.

Residency is the stage after medical school but before someone is a full fledged doctor. Residents do introduce themselves as doctors. Intern is another name for first year residents (aka bottom of the totem pole). Yuuri and Victor are training in the specialty of internal medicine. Victor is in his final year of residency while Yuuri is an intern. After completion of residency, the doctor is referred to as an attending. Attendings can practice independently.

Let me know your thoughts!

-A


	2. Chapter 2: Learning to Drown

Phichit still teased Yuuri about that night Yuuri had no recollection of from five years ago when he was 21. He tried forever to guess Phichit's security code on his phone so he could delete that damn blurry video of him in the night screaming on top of his lungs, "Victor, I believe in you!" The video ended with Phichit's hand shaking from laughter among a myriad of lights.

 _Just who says that stupid stuff..._ Yuuri rubbed his eyes, all of a sudden terrified that he didn't have glasses on, _no...Victor is going to recognize me,_ he grasped onto his bedsheets with desperation for his blue spectacles. That night was one of the few times he wore contact lenses. Took him fifteen minutes to put one in. He was terrified that it would get lost behind his eyeballs and into his brain (that was before he went to medical school).

Then for the first time he was grateful for his phone alarm dragging him back to reality. 5:00 am, there was a hint of dawn outside his window. The days were long in July.

Two weeks into residency, he settled into a routine. Sleep. Work. Eat take-out food or ramen. Shower. And repeat.

His heart still fluttered from the flashback from the medical conference Phichit made him attend when they were sophomores in college. Victor was a medical student back then. He was presenting the free clinics he started for the undocumented and uninsured at the conference.

The medical field is packed with people who are full of shit, Yuuri knew that since the beginning. He heard Phichit rant about the college students who padded their resume with research they don't even care about to get into medical school and those who volunteer until they get the acceptance letter then vanish. Phichit despised people like those he referred to them as 'those assholes who knew how to write tests and bullshit their way in front of the medical school admission committee to convince them that they leak empathy out of every orifice of their body...'

Victor was different. Everything he did was genuine. To apply for funding, partner with organizations and doctors to accomplish what he had done was commitment in its most real form.

Yuuri hardly ever drank since that night.

Phichit told him that Victor drove him back to the hotel that they shared. Victor also made sure Phichit would take care of him.

Yuuri wanted to hide in a crack on the ground and disappear the day after. He couldn't even look at Victor. He had no idea what they did. He had no clue if he said anymore stupid things to him.

 _We could have gone back to his hotel...If we did anything...dirty...I would know afterwards right?_ He clenched his faded dark blue shirt that he slept in, its fabric soft, his heart still racing, _but I didn't feel any different._ Heat rose from to his face, he slapped both of his cheeks as he shook those thoughts away. _That was five years ago, Victor couldn't possibly remember..._

He leapt up and headed to the bathroom and splashed water on his face.

He buttoned his white shirt and looped his usual light blue tie around his neck. He stuffed a granola bar into his bag as an afterthought, and headed for the parking lot.

* * *

Sometimes he felt more like an underpaid secretary than a doctor. Everything meant paperwork, each admission, each day patient spent in the hospital, forms to transfer the patient to another hospital about no chest compressions during the ambulance ride, forms to justify to the insurance company that patient needs the medications to complete the course of treatment.

Amidst the never-ending typing, he answered his pages. He turned his pager onto silent and clipped it on his belt because he was certain the speaker was defective. There was an additional croaking sound to every soul retching beep. It sounded like something being tortured and he decided he had enough.

He worked non-stop while Victor checked his orders, and reviewed his notes in stealth to catch any mistakes. He had a feeling sometimes Victor was letting him drown on purpose. His senior resident did not go easy on him. Victor was one year away from being an attending.

There were one hundred tasks he needed to take care of and nowhere near enough time. But somehow the overwhelming feeling of being smothered by the to-do-list begun to fade. He drew red stars next to the most important ones. He knew, Victor would be there to catch him if he stumbled. It's Thursday, he had been working for eleven days, but this weekend he could finally catch a break. He liked Thursdays, because Thursdays felt like hope while Friday was the light at the end of the tunnel.

His stomach hurt, he suspected it was either hunger or coffee. He made a mental note to cut back. The medical students brought him crackers and a diet soda because he forgot to eat lunch. He wasn't sure what he would do without them. He could not remember the last time he got up from his usual computer by the window.

He liked that spot because it was down the hallway of a hospital wing that was not open. He enjoyed the peace. He could also see the coastline with the white-gold sand. The hospital was one of the tallest building in this quiet little city by the ocean. A few resorts dotted the beach, nothing big or fancy. This city was the a secret gem for escape for not the wealthy, but for the ordinary. Right below him was the helicopter pad with an enormous Red Cross painted on top. He decided to stand up and stretch his legs because he starting to have a throbbing headache from withdrawing from caffeine and his feet were numb.

He left the elevator and headed down the hallway towards the cafeteria looking for iced tea. The fatigue was catching up with him while his stomach churned and made an angry sound.

A familiar face flashed before him. A thin woman in her fifties with golden curls. His heart sank when he realized she was the wife of the patient who was found unresponsive last week. Part of him wanted to disappear because he was tired, because his to do list kept on growing, because he had no idea how he did when her husband's heart stopped last week and he was the first to arrive at the scene. _Get a grip, Dr. Katsuki. Victor would not run away at a time like this, so stop even thinking about it._

Victor had awoken the courage inside him that he never knew he had.

"How...are you?" Yuuri avoided her eyes.

"Dr. Katsuki, I am glad you are here," her face was hollow. She appeared ten years older than the last time he saw her. She purses her lips and shook her head.

Guilt flashed through him like pins and needles stabbing him in the pit of his gut, "what happened?" The hallway to the cafeteria is almost empty because it is closed, people come in for the vending machines. He knew, it wasn't good news.

"We turned off the breathing machine this morning," her lips quivered.

Yuuri could hear his own heart pounding in his chest, "I am so sorry."

"I thought of you and," she sobbed, "that other doctor with the silver hair, you did everything you could."

His hand landed softly on her shoulder, "let me find tissue."

She nodded.

On his way he texted Victor: **I need you to take care of the pager.** And he explained the reason.

 **You got it.** Victor responded without hesitation.

He asked her if she wanted to go to a quieter place, but she shook her head. He handed the tissue to her and sat next to her in the empty cafeteria. He didn't say anything because silence can be a gift more precious than one thousand words.

"He left peacefully, they made sure he wasn't in any pain." She blew her nose, "my husband wasn't very good about taking his medications or seeing his doctors. He thought 'if I don't feel anything with high blood pressure, why should I take my medications'. I told him no, you need to listen to your doctors." She rested her chin on her palm, her eyes distant, "but I felt like this was coming...and that he was slowly fading all along for the past year."

Yuuri leaned forwards with his chin tilted up and listened.

"My husband loved dancing, but when his heart started to fail last year, we couldn't go anymore. I watched the way his breathing became more and more laboured, he couldn't lie flat at night, he hated carrying that oxygen everywhere he went. He hated the fact his legs were always swollen."

"You have gone through a lot," Yuuri met her eyes at the same level, "I can't even imagine."

She nodded, "we have, but I can't help but wonder, looking at his face when he left. He looks like he was in deep sleep, he hasn't slept peacefully for months," her clenched fist relaxed, "I wonder if now he is in a better place." The tired lines on her face faded.

Silence.

"I am sorry to unload all of this onto you...you must be busy...I'll get going." She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

Yuuri shook her head, "we take care of people, it's...what we do."

"Thank you Dr. Katsuki," she begun to stand up.

For the first time Yuuri felt like a real doctor, and the long white coat wasn't just a costume with pockets. He felt lighter spending time with her. Unbeknownst to her, through those words he was also beginning to heal.

"I have been thinking, I should take care of myself too," she crumpled the tissue in her hand, "I haven't seen a doctor for more than five years. I don't know how long it's going to take for me to find happiness again without him, but life goes on...If it's not too much to ask...will you...be my doctor?"

Yuuri's lips parted as he inhaled sharply then he nodded, "absolutely. I have clinic on Wednesday afternoons." He scribbled the clinic address and phone number onto a piece of napkin, "sorry I don't have a card. If my schedule is full in the next week or two, I will ask the staff to fit you in."

"Thank you, I know you are new, but you are going to be splendid." At last she smiled through her red rimmed eyes, "I don't think I told you my first name, my name is Alice."

"Yuuri," he blushed scarlet and scratched his head. A wave of warmth spread throughout his body.

He was grateful that he gathered the courage to speak with her instead of turning away. Running away would have been easier.

* * *

They left the hospital an hour late that day. Victor discharged three patients while Yuuri sat with Alice in the empty cafeteria.

"...she thought I did fine during the code," Yuuri's voice trembled a little as he told Victor about earlier.

"I knew you could do it," Victor shut the call room door as he swung his brown bag across one shoulder, "because I believe in you." His voice gentle as the ocean waves along the golden shore. Yuuri froze, _this has to be a coincidence. Please let this be s coincidence and not because of that night._ He spun around suddenly, hoping Victor won't see his face. If Phichit heard this conversation he would have a kick out of this. _Damn, I need to delete that video._

Yuuri realized later when he became a senior resident when his interns showed up timid and lost, one of the most empowering things he did for them was to sometimes let them drown. Because after they fumble and struggle and drag themselves back ashore, they realize like he did now, _I can do this._

"Yuuri, can you do me a favour?" Victor rubbed the back of his own neck with his hand, as they approached the spinning door of the hospital, "I know you haven't had a break for a while, and you may or may not want to see me because I am associated with work and the hospital, but Chris is working this weekend, will you...come to my son's birthday party?" His gaze transfixed onto the ground in front of Yuuri.

Yuuri's heart raced, "of course, I'll come!" He internally kicked himself thinking he sounded too eager, "it's not a favour at all."

This was the first time he saw a hint of color spread on across Victor's cheeks. His aquamarine eyes met Yuuri's as he flashed a brilliant smile that reminded Yuuri of the old Victor he remembered from the medical conference six years ago, the fearless, confident, and care free.

 _Victor, I want you to continue to smile like this._

* * *

His body woke up before his mind did. He groaned as he picked up his phone to check the time. 4:45 am. He couldn't sleep in even if he tried. _Stupid residency._

He sighed as he put on his glasses and the world became crystal clear again. A glimmer of light shone through his blinds. A pile of laundry overwhelmed his basket. Several dress shirts and socks laid on the ground. _Mom and Mari would be furious,_ he amused himself for a second. His parents and sister ran a resort in Japan, across the ocean. He had been raised to clean up after himself. But rules bent during residency.

 _What should I buy for a one year old?_ He had no clue. It's too early to ask Phichit, who has three younger siblings. Victor told him not to bring anything because this was last minute.

The mall isn't going to be open for a while.

He removed his glasses and stared at himself in the bathroom mirror. He pushed his hair back. Phichit told him if he abandoned the glasses more often he would get laid more often as well.

It's been five years, since he last wore contact lenses. His heart fluttered. _That comment Victor made, it must be a coincidence right? What if he was mocking me in secret for shouting those embarrassing words on top of my lungs._ He exhaled and let go of his hair, removed his clothes and turned on the shower. _Victor can't possibly remember that night,_ he decided. _I am never taking off my glasses in front of him._

He stepped into the shower and let the warmth envelope his body.

* * *

He rang the doorbell with his left hand that also held the string of blue helium balloon with golden letters 'Happy birthday!' written across.

A large gift bag hung from his right hand with the fluff from the tail of the stuffed lion sticking from the top. He filled the bag with books, because he remembered as a child his parents always read to him. He grew up sprawling in picture books and there was nothing he loved more than bed time stories. He wished he had more time time during residency to read. One of his favourite activities was to curl up on the sofa with a good book, a mug of coffee on a rainy day. He thought of Phichit for a second who was the opposite from him: extraverted, popular, party animal. While he was the introverted, quiet wallflower... _Why am I friends with him?_ He amused himself for a second.

"Yuri," Victor opened the door, "you didn't have to bring all that!" His face lit up. He wore a V-neck magenta shirt and grey sweat pants, "thank you."

Yuuri had never seen him in anything other than the white coat with perfectly tailored dress shirts underneath. He looked more vibrant than Yuuri had ever seen him.

"It's nothing," Yuuri grinned as Victor's hand brushed past his when he took the gift bag filled with books. Suddenly Yuuri almost found himself on the ground as a giant brown ball of fur leapt onto him.

"Makkachin, easy," a laugh escaped through Victor's throat as he watched Yuuri's expression.

The brown poodle was massive, Yuuri sank his hand into his soft fur.

"Make yourself comfortable, the food will be ready soon," Victor put the gift bags on the chair, "shit, I forgot to set the timer." He mumbled as he rushed into the kitchen.

Yuuri glanced at his studio apartment. On the back wall a banner with "Happy Birthday Luke" hung across the wall with high ceiling. He couldn't help but sense loneliness radiating from those empty walls. There was one picture of Victor holding a baby with golden hair and large brown eyes. At the other end of his apartment is a book case filled with medical textbooks, and various mystery novels. _I wonder what happened to his wife...and why he is raising an one year old on his own?_ He wasn't going to ask. A cactus in a clay pot sat on his windowsill.

Makkachin wagged his tail as he followed Yuuri into the kitchen, "You need help?" Yuuri watched Victor put on a dark blue baking glove as he removed a tray filled with quiche from the oven. They were slightly burnt around the edges.

"I am good, thanks, I think enough of these are edible, sorry Yuuri, I am not used to this..." Victor let out a dry laugh.

Yuuri couldn't help but smile when his glanced transfixed onto the high chair on the opposite of the kitchen. The baby was much bigger in comparison to the picture. His hair a shade of pale gold as the sandy shore, his dark brown eyes met Yuuri's. _He looked nothing like Victor_ , "Hi Luke."

Then Luke's lip begun to tremble, as Makkachin followed Yuuri closer to the chair.

The baby started bawling as if the world is ending.

"He is at _that_ age," Victor walked towards his son wearing a blue onesie with green dinosaur print as he picked him up, "who is that big and scary stranger." He teased Yuuri, "Shh, Lukas it's okay, this is Yuuri." He patted him on the back, "and he brought you a lion."

Yuuri scratched his head and chuckled, _this is awkward,_ "Sorry for looking scary." He recalled vaguely from memorizing developmental milestones for children during his medical school days that at one year old, stranger anxiety kicks in.

Victor set the square table with two sets of plates and forks, and the high chair on one end. Yuuri realized nobody else is coming. He heard from Phichit that three months ago Victor transferred here from the big fancy hospital that only hired the best of the best. Phichit refused to say the name of the big fancy hospital because he was still bitter that even with his grades, he couldn't make it there for residency. He had no clue the reason Victor would abandon the prestige to come to this small hospital in the middle of nowhere. He wasn't going to ask.

"I'll grab the cake," Victor headed back for the kitchen.

Luke held the tail of the fluffy lion as his large dark eyes followed Yuuri with curiosity. Yuuri had no idea how to play with children, he sank into the wooden chair and grinned.

Victor came back with a simple light blue cake with "Happy Birthday Luke" written in cursive midnight blue letters, he lit the single candle shaped like the number 1 with decorated with confetti colour, "ready to sing?" He grinned, "let's take a picture." He set the cake down in front of Luke and gestured for Yuuri to join him behind the high chair. With ease, he leaned closer and his arm rested around Yuuri's shoulder as he snapped a photo with his phone, "your eyes are closed Yuuri. Alright, one more time."

Luke clapped his chubby hands together and giggled.

"Let's take a video too," Victor focused the camera from his phone on himself, "Lukas Damien Nikiforov, today is your first birthday," he kissed his son's blonde hair, "Daddy loves you." Next Yuuri's face appeared onto the video, "This is Yuuri."

"Happy birthday Luke!" Yuuri waved.

They sang Happy Birthday, and blew out the candle together sending a wisp of white smoke rising towards the ceiling.

"Sorry about the food," Victor rubbed his neck with one hand as he gazed at the quiches that were a little burnt around the edges.

Yuuri shook his head, he had never felt more relaxed before in front of him. He looked up to Victor all of his life, he was impeccable, perfect in his eyes all along. Little by little, Victor was becoming a real person. Yuuri saw him trip and stumble, and the way he was clumsy in the kitchen, and the way that his smile rarely reached his eyes.

They watched as Luke buried his face straight into the slice of cake in front of him, and flapped his fingers with blue icing dripping onto the floor.

Victor buried half of his his face into his hand, "Of course." He left to gather cleaning supplies.

Yuuri's stomach hurt from laughing.

They ate salad, the cake, and parts of the quiche that weren't burnt.

After dinner, Victor put Luke to bed inside his crib. Yuuri offered to help him clean up, but he insisted he was find on his own.

The fatigue from working 12 days in a row was catching up to him. The grey couch felt more and more comfortable from underneath him. Yuuri shut his eyes as his mind drifted into nothingness.

Victor came back from the kitchen to find Yuuri asleep on his couch, with his glasses low on the bridge of this nose. He sat next to his tired intern on the floor after covering him with his coat. Yuuri's glasses looked as if they were about to fall off any second. Victor watched him out of the corner of his eyes. Gingerly he took off Yuuri's glasses as a few soft black strands brushed past the back of his hand. He couldn't help himself but kneel before Yuuri, and he ran his other hand through Yuuri's hair, pushing it back. He leaned down until their noses were inches apart, a little shy, a little hesitant.

This was the most Victor smiled for real in days, the sensation felt foreign on his cheeks.

He paused before moving any closer and retracted his hand as Yuuri stirred.

He left the living room opened his cabinet containing his medication box inside the kitchen, heat whirled within his eyes. He poured himself a glass of water as he swallowed his evening dose of antidepressants, determined to not let tears fall this time. Sometimes he had no control over when they would. The evening hours were the worst parts.

He heard footsteps, and rubbed his eyes and shoved his medication box back into the kitchen cabinet.

"Sorry Victor, I fell asleep," Yuuri's face was red, he was avoiding his gaze again. He was panicking inside because he woke up with his glasses folded on the table next to the couch. _What if he remembers, what if he recognizes me..._

"You deserve some good sleep, Yuuri," Victor put his glass of water back onto the kitchen counter and he made tea for both of them. The dying sun painted the sky orange, they didn't turn on the lights yet.

Victor sat across from Yuuri at the square dining table, he interlaced his fingers beneath the table, "you probably wonder what happened to Luke's mother."

"I didn't want to pry," Yuuri sipped his mint tea.

"She left for someone else," Victor sighed, his gaze downcast, "we met in med school. She asked me out first. This was the second time in my life I felt something called love. And one thing led to another, we got married and Lukas came into the picture."

Yuuri leaned closer to him as he listened. Makkachin rested his chin on Yuuri's leg. He stroked his fur.

"I tried to make it work at first, I pretended everything was fine, and that we were a happy family. I didn't want Luke to grow up without a mother. I pretended that I never saw her when she cheated on me with one of the executives of the hospital. Maybe it's her residency, I am not sure when somewhere along she broke. I tried to be there for her, but she was too far gone. I gave her more than enough chances...At the end, her lawyer handed me the divorce papers." Victor's silver locks fell in front of his sad ocean coloured eyes.

"I'm sorry," a part of Yuuri wanted to hold him, but he was too shy to move, he held Makkachin instead.

"She left Lukas and I, and never even visited him once," Victor shook his head, "Makkachin was a puppy when we got her together.

Yuuri begun to see the broken soul in front of him. He couldn't imagine how Victor felt every time he gazed at Lukas and at Makkachin too. She left him with everything.

"I am grateful for Luke, he's my only reason to go on," Victor's narrowed his eyes stilled locked with Yuuri's dark brown orbs.

"I am confident you'll find more" Yuuri shook head, "Victor, chin up."

Victor sat a little straighter as he obeyed, "thanks."

Before Yuuri left for the evening, he said, "Victor, my parents own a resort, I won't pretend to be a chef or anything, but I learned a thing or two. If you don't mind...come over for dinner sometimes?"

Victor's face lit up, and he nodded.

* * *

Yuuri realized with the stress eating the buttons on his shirt felt tighter than before. He wasn't taking care of himself.

He decided something needed to change.

It was dawn on Sunday morning, he couldn't sleep in anyways because his body gotten used to waking up at 5 am already. _That's a good thing, I suppose_ , he was being optimistic, _waking up early means I will get more done._

Before the sun rose any higher, he put on black shorts and a midnight blue shirt, plugged in his headphones started to run towards the path paved by wooden planks.

 _Damn, I am out of shape,_ he panted, he thought about the question he always asked patients to assess their heart: _how many flights of stairs can you climb without feeling short of breath?_ He didn't want to answer that question for himself. He ran until his stomach and thighs felt raw from the impact against the never-ending path. Somehow along the way he couldn't stop himself from smiling because he realized what Victor meant to him.

He spent his entire life trying to catch up to him.

Victor inspired him to become the best version of himself.

He was happy that Victor opened up to him, despite his circumstances.

 _I will stand by you._ He whispered in his mind as he watched the seagulls spiral above him in the cloudless cerulean sky.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

Thanks for your kind words, it makes me happy and not feel like I am alone as I write :)

I decided to post this it in July because I wrote it dedicated to the new interns: no matter how dark certain parts of residency may seem, _There Is_ hope  & it gets better...so believe in yourself.

On Tumblr if you want to chat: antarespromise . tumblr . com

-A

 **Chapter 3: Pimping**

(This word has its own meaning in the medical world...).

* * *

 **Re: Reviews:**

 **SomeRandomPerson:** thanks so much for your support! Hehe I had fun writing this one.

 **AiViCi:** Thanks for reading :) As for caffeine and energy drinks, I think too much of anything can potentially be toxic. This story is about hope more than anything else (this is the opposite from the usual angst I write).

 **MissMJS:** I am not allowing myself to write too much angst in this story. It's about finding hope.

 **Willie-chan:** thanks so much for reading. Thank you for pointing out re: typos, I am actively trying to improve my writing.

 **Teirune:** thanks  & hope you enjoy this chapter.


	3. Chapter 3: Thursday People

Phichit sat next to him on a high stool not even pretending to be helpful as Yuuri whisked the eggs and set it aside.

"You know, residency made me learn a lot about myself," Phichit cut the suture, which is the thread attached to the curved needle used to close wounds, as he practiced stitching two pieces of banana peel together. He loaded the needle driver and started the next stitch, made loops and tugged back and forth. He will be rotating through the emergency department for the next month, he made Yuuri teach him the procedure.

"Tell me about it," Yuuri laughed...

"I didn't know I had this much hatred inside me until I became an intern," Phichit chuckled, "the word 'hate' is such a strong word, but when you chronically don't see the sun, get pimped at morning rounds, yelled at by patients, nurses and the asshole consultant that don't want to see the patient because he is a lazy piece of shit...even the best of us will start to lose it."

Yuuri turned on the stove, "I hear you." Phichit had always been the over achiever. He partied, he drank and he spent less than anyone else studying than anyone yet still ended up the top 1%, to Yuuri's envy, "but you of all people know your stuff."

"Baranovskaya is the worst," Phichit shuddered, as he threw another knot. The two pieces of banana peels are now perfectly aligned and held together by even stitches, "she tortures interns. She pimped me in front of two whole teams, and while our program director was walking by...I heard she used to travel the world as a ballet dancer, but she retired after an injury and went on to become a doctor..." He shook his head, "she told me I should have tried harder in medical school."

'Pimping' had its own meaning in the medical world, thinking about it made Yuuri break into cold sweat. It meant being thrown on the spotlight in front of a group to answer increasingly difficult questions and 'dinged' in public.

"Fuck," Yuuri whispered as he lifted the lid of the pot to check on the rice, "I am working with her next."

Phichit burst in laughter, the suture in his hand quivering.

"What?" Yuuri fluffed the rice with a fork.

His friend almost had tears in his eyes at this point, "hearing you swear." Phichit put his face on the table, his shoulder still shaking, "Yuuri, you are...the nicest person I know, when you are pissed off, nobody could tell, even when you rage you are still sound nice. Growing up I could count the number of foul words out of your mouth with one hand...but what the hell happened?"

Yuuri snorted, "residency happened."

Phichit sat up straighter, "that smells amazing, Yuuri how many more times are you going to practice making it before he comes over? Not that I am complaining." He grinned.

Yuuri shrugged as he plated the pork cutlets over the steaming rice, "it's not my mom's katsudon, because nobody could make it like she does, but it's the best I've got."

"Are you kidding? It tastes out of this world!" Phichit set the table with eagerness.

Yuuri thought about the way Victor fumbled in the kitchen, the way he burnt his food, and picked up after Luke only to return to more mess, and the sadness in his voice when he spoke about his ex-wife who betrayed him. Yet in the hospital, Victor always hid behind that smile that never reached his eyes, spoke to patients and family members with a voice filled with warmth. Victor put on an act so flawless that nobody could see the broke soul behind those confident and unfazed eyes. A sharp twinge of pain shot through him.

"You are into him," his best friend saw right through him, "I knew it...since the beginning, since that night. "

Yuuri dropped the fork in his hand and averted his gaze, without even trying to deny it. His face turning red, "I-...well...I don't think he is at the point of his life to start anything yet...Let's eat, I am starving." He tried distracting Phichit with food, but failed miserably.

"Yuuri, stop changing the topic. I told you, get rid of those glasses, and burn that blue tie and that old dress shirt, if you want him to notice, you need to at least make an effort." Phichit took his first bite, "damn Yuuri you would be a rich and famous chef by now if you went for it!"

"Instead, I went to med school, which taught me how to write big long expensive tests," Yuuri took a sip of his water. He gave up soda the day he started running.

"Back to our original topic," Phichit watched his best friend through skeptical eyes, "maybe once you put away the glasses that will remind him of that night -"

"Hey! I am never inviting you over for food again -" Yuuri grumbled. He started panicking internally, Victor saw me without glasses after I fell asleep on his couch after his son's birthday party. On that night five years ago I wasn't wearing glasses...I must have had too much champagne because I had nothing to say to Phichit's friends...and turned wild like my dad after a few shots of sake. He vaguely remembered the elevator in the lobby of Victor's hotel, and nothing after that.

"You don't need to invite me for food, I invite myself - " Phichit grinned as he wolfed down half of his katsudon.

"Why am I even friends with you?" Yuuri sighed and smiled back at his childhood friend. Truth is, they had few friends in common. Phichit partied and knew just about everyone. He was also a minor Instagram celebrity. Yuuri met some of Phichit's friends but couldn't find anything to talk to them about. They were the 'popular' crowd, while Yuuri was...Yuuri. He made peace already with his own social awkwardness, introverted nature. He made peace with the fact that there was nothing wrong with being alone a long time ago.

* * *

Monday morning the teams changed, Yuuri was no longer under Victor's wings. He treaded on eggshells since dawn because his attending for this month was the infamous ballerina turned doctor, who had a scary reputation amongst the interns: Lilia Baranovskaya.

Her figure was perfect, she wore a dark yellow dress past her knees underneath her white coat that made an ordinary person appear out of place, but on her, high fashion. Her dark violet stethoscope wrapped around her neck complimenting her dress. Her brown hair pulled back into a neat bun on top of her head. Her heels clicked and paused with authority.

"Hello, team, it's the first time we are rounding together, let's introduce ourselves," she didn't smile much, "my name is Lilia Baranovskaya."

Yuuri glanced around at his new team and shuffled his feet while gripping on his stethoscope inside his pocket. For the past month, Victor taught him the nuances of the hospital, such as orders to put in to avoid being paged, the wording to use when a consult gives pushback. Victor wasn't easy on him, he was direct when Yuuri made a mistake. But by the final week, Yuuri found himself not needing his senior's help for everything. He was able to fly solo for some time.

They went around stating their names. His new senior resident is a tall easy going guy with a slight beard and bright blue eyes named Emil. The other intern seemed confident, as he shook Yuuri's sweaty hands and introduced himself as JJ. Next to him stood a medical student with dark hair and eyes named Otabek Altin.

"Great, let me make a few things clear, I have high expectations from all of you, let's get started..."

JJ presented the first patient, Lilia listened intently and asked him a few questions which he knew all of the answers to. He even made a point to teach Otabek.

"Katsuki, present your patients," Lilia shifted her hawk like gaze.

Yuuri felt like a little white mouse, he started to present his patient. Thinking back at Phichit's story about her torturing the interns without mercy.

"Louder, you are mumbling -" Lilia glared at him.

"S-sorry-," he gazed down at the patient's labs he scribbled on this paper, "...his sodium trended down to 124..."

"Why?" Lilia's heel clicked as she took two steps forwards, "walk us through the evaluation of hyponatremia."

Of all topics he had to answer questions to, this was one of his shakiest ones. Yuuri rummaged through his mind for that picture of the algorithm that he kept on looking up and forgetting over and over. It wasn't coming. A wave of nausea washed over him. Phichit spent less time studying than everyone else, but Yuuri on the other hand had to put in the work for his grades. His heart raced, his palms wet, heat rushed towards his face...

He froze.

"This is unacceptable, you are taking care of the patient and you do not know what is going on...also, stop jumping around in your presentation, remember what they taught you in medical school about how to present a patient?" Lilia sighed, "I need to talk to you after rounds."

Yuuri nodded and followed behind the rest of his team to see the patients they presented, his gaze on the ground in defeat.

A familiar scent resembling the pine forest after the rain distracted him for a second.

Victor grinned at him, and waved. Even Lilia smiled when she saw him, her face looked much younger when she did.

Yuuri plastered a forced smile and nodded, he wished Victor's comforting presence was next to him earlier. But at same time he was happy that Victor didn't see him humiliate himself.

His phone vibrated inside his pocket, he peeked at the message before putting on the yellow isolation gown to enter the patient's room. It was from Victor.

 **It gets better.**

 **Let me know if you need anything.**

Yuuri was dead tired that night. Lilia gave her a earful after rounds that day. He wondered how he was suppose to write twelve notes, see all of those patients, complete the paperwork, call the social worker while answering pages and read articles and guidelines at the same time.

He felt like shit because next to him JJ seemed ahead by leaps and bounds. It made him feel worse when JJ tried comforting him afterwards. He felt behind, and remedial...

* * *

He collapsed onto his bed but told himself that was a bad idea because the minute he laid there meant the less likely for him to get up. He could still hear Lilia's voice ringing in his mind, 'you are not where I would like you to be, medical students gather information, but residents synthesize the information and formulates a plan. Your information gathering still has holes in it. You need to go home and think about your patients.' _Damnit..._ he slammed his fist into his mattress. Victor...he thought of him, remembering his text message that he didn't have time to respond to. He flipped over onto his belly and unlocked his phone.

He stared at the black letters on the grey background of Victor's text.

 **It gets better.**

 _Really Victor?_ _I should respond,_ he typed. **Thanks.**

He buried his face into the mattress, gathering determination to pull himself back up again to go out for a run. The setting sun was painting the sky outside of his window orange.

 _Beep_ , he received a text from Victor.

 **Yuuri, are you alright?**

Yuuri's heart raced. He didn't want to tell Victor that he wasn't.

 **Yea, long day...** he responded.

 **You can tell me the truth, Yuuri. You looked sad when you left today.**

 _How did he notice?_ Yuuri's heart fluttered inside his chest as heat rose on his face.

 **She asked me a lot of questions I didn't know the answers to. But as soon as the pimping session was over, I remembered everything. (-.-)"**

 **Let me guess, hyponatremia?** Victor texted right back.

 **Yea, how did you know...?**

 **If I decide to pick on interns, that's the first topic I would choose, haha. I have been there before. Listen Yuuri, this is your fifth week as a doctor, you won't have time at this point to get everything done. You have notes to write, electrolytes to replete and to answer the pages. I don't agree with her method sometimes, but Lilia is trying to push you to become a better doctor. She can sound like a nut job sometimes, but her heart is in the right place.**

Yuuri actually laughed out loud, he wasn't expecting Victor to call anyone a 'nut job'. As reflex he typed ' **lol** '.

 **What's so funny?** Victor responded.

 **You calling anyone a 'nut job.'**

 **Lol, you think too highly of me.**

Every day Victor became more as a real person to him, he couldn't help but feel a wave of warmth wash over his body. Instead of the high pedestal that Yuuri placed him upon all of his life, he was becoming...tangible. He clutched his phone next to his heart and closed his eyes. His imagination took control of him next. He pictured Victor lying next him, and that he nestled his neck between Victor's arm and his chest listening to his heart beats. He conjured the feeling of Victor's silver strands in between his fingers and his warm and even breathes speeding up with their closeness. He took off his glasses and covered his face with his hand, his chest tight, he then wrapped his arms around himself, pretending that they were close, and that Victor's gentle hand was making its way through the thin fabric of his shirt sending shiver down his spine.

The beep from his phone interrupted his thoughts.

 **What I wanted to tell you from earlier was, when you present patients, remember, it's simple. Remember the SOAP format. Subjective: How the patient is feeling and any overnight events. Objective: Vitals, physical exam, and labs. Assessment and Plan, list the active issues in order of importance and what you are doing to address each one. And by the way, Yuuri, we are all faking it until actually make it.**

Yuuri snapped back to reality, blushing a little. **Noted. Thanks!**

 **Any time. I am going to read and put Luke to bed. He loves the book you bought for his birthday by the way.**

 **I'm glad!** _Do I sound too eager?_ Yuuri kicked himself, his heart pounding. His glasses laid next to him, he had to bring his phone close to his face to see the screen. He gathered his courage, he thought of Phichit giving him a friendly shove. He held his breathes and typed, **do you want to stop by for dinner on Thursday...because I am a Thursday person? Bring Luke.**

The seconds he waited for Victor to respond felt like hours.

 **Really? That would be great, your saw my mess in the kitchen. I'll bring dessert. Btw why are you a Thursday person?**

Yuuri wondered if he said too much, he sat up with a huge grin on his face. **Because, to me, Thursday is hope, and Friday is the light at the end of the tunnel.**

 **lol I like that.**

Yuuri felt as if all of the fatigue, rage and self loathing was gone. He changed into his running clothes, picked up his arm band to hold his phone connected to his headphones and headed outside.

* * *

Wednesday morning Yuuri had an extra large coffee because the night before he stayed up a little because he was looking up a few questions he had about the patient's condition. He took a deep breathe as he inserted himself next to Otabek and JJ to start morning rounds.

He started his presentation with his face buried in the patient list where he scribbled labs and patient's active issues on.

"Hold on," Lilia's heels clicked twice forwards and she snatched the paper, his lifeline, from his hand, "continue, you should know your patient well enough to not have to look."

At first he stumbled on his words while losing control on the inside, but he remembered Victor's words, _just follow the SOAP format._ He thought he couldn't recall all of the patient's problems and all of the labs, but somehow his mind focused on the abnormal labs that were significant. Victor taught him to stand up straighter, to take up more space as a way to assert his power. Somehow he stopped caring at that point, he spoke from memory.

Lilia asked a few follow up questions on the topics that he read last night. He looked her in the eyes and answered. His palm still as sweaty but he didn't hide them in his pockets. She pressed on a few more. He didn't know how to answer most of them, but he made a point that he would look it up.

At last, Lilia clapped her hands together once and nodded, "better."

Yuuri realized she wasn't intentionally being nasty, but she wanted to light a fire under his ass. She wanted him to be a better doctor. He decided to take back all of the bad words he called her inside his head.

* * *

He couldn't wait till work finished on Thursday, he made a trip to the grocery store the night before and everything he needed to make katsudon was stocked in his fridge. He knew his mother's recipe by heart. His parents moved back to his hometown in Japan after he graduated from college to run a hot spring resort.

He opened the cardboard box with his utility knife and headed for the bathroom. He washed his hands with soap and took off his glasses. He hasn't put contact lenses in for five years. He exhaled deeply, and found a somewhat legit video online for the instructions. Phichit told him to drink some "liquid courage" (aka alcohol) before Victor came over, to which he flat out refused. The last time he wore contacts lenses and drank alcohol, he ended up inside Victor's hotel and couldn't remember anything else afterwards. He still had to delete that damn video from his best friend's phone.

Putting in contact lenses didn't take as long as he thought. He affirmed to himself, _he already saw me without glasses when I fell asleep on his couch last time, if he remembered, he would have said something...or could have gone awkward afterwards. But nothing changed. Therefore, he doesn't remember..._

He rehearsed the recipe in his head one last time and with swift and movements, prepared the ingredients and started cooking. Helping his parents inside the kitchen of their family restaurant was natural for him, and residency reinforced that speed and focus.

Right when he plated everything, the doorbell rang. He gaze at his reflection one more time from the darkness of his phone's screen. He noted the front of his hair was almost touching his eyes. _I need a haircut..._ he made a mental note. He felt naked without the security behind his blue rimmed glasses. He could hear Phichit's voice in the back of his head again, 'you like him...you have to at least try...' He blushed, and shook the fantasies out of his head.

He opened the door.

Victor looked like he could have stepped out of a magazine. He wore a loose white shirt with rolled up sleeves and the first button undone. His light scent washed over Yuuri, "Hey." Victor's face lit up, and his grin reached his eyes.

"Hey," Yuuri echoed as he let him in, "where's Luke?" He was expecting Victor to show up with a stroller.

Victor shut the door behind them and scratched the back of his head, "Mila insisted that I should spend some quality time with my...friend, so she is watching him for me for a few more hours tonight." He handed Yuuri the beige paper bag, "I brought dessert."

Yuuri peered inside, "I am ready to shell out those calories after this week, what is it?"

"Tiramisu," Victor removed his shoes and glanced at Yuuri's small studio apartment. He cleaned every surface before Victor came over. A few panes of wooden screen with a hand painted crane divided the living room and his bed.

"It's my favourite," Yuuri beamed as he set it down on the tall dark kitchen counter that doubled as his dining room table, "I am having caffeine withdraw right now."

"Whatever it is you made smells delicious," Victor sat down onto one of the tall chairs along the kitchen counter.

"I can't make katsudon the same way my mom does, but this is the best imitation I can do," Yuuri poured Victor a glass of steaming green tea into a pitch black cup with aquamarine inside. His heart raced, _what if I put too much salt in...what if he doesn't like it?_

He held his breathe until Victor took his first bite.

Victor's eyes widened, and looked as if he was going to cry. He muttered a word Yuuri didn't recognize in Russian.

"Sorry -" Yuuri by reflex apologized.

"Are you kidding me Yuuri?!" Victor put down his chopsticks, "This is...the best thing I have ever had..."

Warmth spread from the pit of his stomach to the rest of Yuuri's body as heat rose towards his face again, "I'm glad." He suspected Victor must have not had a home cooked meal in ages. He saw the content of Victor's fridge, boxes of pre-made food stacked next to each other, the aluminum containers filled with pasta ready to be prepared in the oven. _Welcome to residency._

Victor ate his katsudon at the same speed Phichit did, Yuuri was only halfway through. Yuuri watched him from the corner of his eyes, he didn't talk much because Victor appeared mesmerized by the food. He didn't want to interrupt.

"So, tell me about you, Yuuri," Victor wiped the piece of rice from the corner of his lip, "why did you become a doctor?"

Yuuri laughed, "that's a tough question." He wanted to say, _because of you, Victor Nikiforov._ _Because I spent my entire life catching up to you, because you are everything that I ever dreamt of, because you are everything that I ever wanted._ Instead he said, "If you asked that question two days ago I would have questioned by life choices too."

Victor chuckled, "Fair enough, I won't give you a hard time." The _Ping_ sound from his phone interrupted him.

Yuuri noticed a few slips of paper fluttering down onto the ground as Victor pulled his phone out of his pocket. As Victor read his text message, Yuuri bent down to picked them up. His chest felt tight after he saw what they were. They were slips from the pharmacy for prescriptions for three different types of antidepressants with Victor's name next to them.

Victor tore his gaze from the screen and saw him picking up the slips.

"Victor, I am sorry, I saw by accident -" Yuuri bowed his head as he handed the slips back to him.

Victor's hand brushed past his fingers, as he took them back, "It's alright, yes, I had to get help because of Luke. But I am fine." That fake smile again.

Yuuri took two steps towards him, "no you are not." He didn't realize how close he stood next to Victor, who still sat on the tall blue stool by his kitchen counter forcing Victor to gaze up at him. He reflexively placed a hand on Victor's shoulder, "listen Victor, you have seen me in my worst moments and you lifted me up...so please...let me do the same..." his voice ended in a whisper.

Victor's face fell, his eyebrows furled and unfurled as he tilted his chin up and their eyes met. On his beautiful eyes, a slight hint of a glimmer appeared.

"Victor, if you ever have dark thoughts, or anything at all, I want you to call me. I don't care what time it is," Yuuri tightened his grasp on Victor's shirt. He took another step forwards and wrapped his arms around him pulling him close. He didn't know where the courage came from, but it felt...right. He felt Victor's grip around his back tighten, and his silver soft hair under his chin. There are one million things he wanted to say to the person he admired forever.

"Yuuri..." Victor's voice sounded muffled against his chest, "...thanks. I mean it."

Yuuri pulled back, and suddenly realized what he had done. He turned around in embarrassment, "let's eat cake." He opened the wrong drawer looking for a knife.

He wasn't the only one blushing, he realized. Victor rubbed his own neck with his hand.

When it was time to say goodnight, Victor turned to him, his smile genuine this time, "thanks for dinner tonight, it was the best meal I have ever had."

"You are welcome back at any time," Yuuri grinned.

"Can I take you out sometimes for drinks, coffee, or maybe heart-attack food?" Victor saw Yuuri cringe when he said drinks.

"Coffee and heart-attack food sounds good," Yuuri accompanied him to the doorway, he laughed at the last part of Victor's proposal.

"What about next Thursday after work?" Victor's silver bangs fell before his eyes, "there's this cafe, the owner is the nicest old man you'd ever meet, and his grandson, despite his personality can play the piano like no other. And their coffee beats that shit they brew at the hospital by leaps and bounds."

"You know how I like Thursdays."

"Yea, Thursday is hope, and Friday is the light at the end of the tunnel,right Yuuri?" Victor quoted him and laughed.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

Let me know if you enjoyed this chapter!

-A

* * *

 **Re: reviews:**

willie-chan: thanks so much, the imposter syndrome is very real. Doctors are actually the worst patients...many of us seem to feel because we know what's going on we don't need to seek help. During residency we have lectures about burn out, fatigue, and I confess to rolling my eyes in the beginning because I consider myself resilient, but until I experienced it, it was very real. This story isn't my personal experience, but I wrote it to indulge myself a little telling the story in the world I am familiar with.

AiViCi: I keep on reminding myself: do not write angst, do not write angst...lol. Thanks for reading!

MissMJS: Thanks so much! This story is so different from my other one, fantasy vs reality, slow burn vs...well you know lol

sleonard: thank you :) hope you enjoy this one.


	4. Chapter 4: Cosmos

"No way, that's disgusting, why would anyone...hook up in the residents' call room." Yuuri inhaled his sandwich as fast as he could, he didn't have time to each breakfast today while praying his pager did not display the number from the emergency department, meaning a new admission on their team and half an hour of paperwork.

Phichit shuddered next to him, "I overheard the housekeepers saying they were cleaning...' _stuff_ '...up, I really didn't want to hear the rest of it..."

"Don't tell me...I thought that only happens on stupid medical dramas on TV," Yuuri bit into his apple. It's skin was tough, his gum hurt, it didn't have any taste either. _Shitty cafeteria fruit..._ he grumbled in his mind, "their white coats are too clean, they need more dark circles for make up, and not enough bad language..."

Phichit snorted into his Diet Coke, "Yuuri, you are so innocent! People hook up anywhere. Period. Maybe they like danger, of almost being caught. Maybe it's for stress relief, who knows. Maybe they don't have time otherwise."

"In a breeding ground for the next superbug, and the C. diff spores?" Yuuri shook his head. To him, inside the hospital meant work. It was the last place he'd even think of impressing someone. _C. diff_ is the short form of a bacteria notorious for causing diarrhea.

"By the way, Yuuri," Phichit flashed him a grin meaning he was up to no good, "you listened to my advice. He must be going crazy right now."

"I have no idea what you are talking about," Yuuri forced another bite on the bland cafeteria apple that sat on the shelf for too long. He tried to push the frame of his blue glasses up reflexively, but he then realized that they weren't there anymore. He started wearing contact lenses. He felt naked.

"Yuuri, let me spell it out for you," His best friend teased him as he leaned closer, "you look hot."

Yuuri felt his entire face burning, "shut up, Phichit." He turned his face towards the wall, hoping no one would notice. His hand tried to settle on the bridge of his invisible glasses once again without success.

"I overheard the med students talk, some of the girls were whispering wondering if Dr. Katsuki was single." Phichit's hand trembled in silent laughter.

Yuuri was not used to that kind of attention. Phichit had always been the popular one who knew everyone. Yuuri was the quiet and nerdy one. In high school and beyond, they didn't have much mutual friends, but they remained close. Yuuri had memories of college as the night went on, Phichit's friends getting drunker and drunker while he had always been the designated river.

"The same group of girls are all over your med student too, what's his name again?" Phichit possessed not only phenomenal amount of medical knowledge, he also knew all of the gossip there were.

"Otabek Altin," Yuuri swallowed another chunk of apple, "he wants to be a surgeon, he's the best student ever. Before I thought about getting up to get the form to fill out at the risk of losing my computer, he hands me the completed form. I do try to squeeze time in to try to teach him _something_. I don't want to make med students do only scut work, they are here to learn too." Sometimes he felt ridiculous because it was four weeks ago that he was a med student himself. Lilia, the attending who was infamous for torturing interns made a snarky remark that Yuuri was still 'on the med student level' and she wondered when 'he was going to make that transition'. Yuuri shuddered.

"At least he is honest that he wants to be a surgeon, Phichit propped his chin in his palm, "ever met one of those students that pretend they want to be a surgeon on Surgery rotation and an internist on an internal medicine rotation?"

"Too many..." Yuuri laughed, "they are so full of shit..."

"We are all full of shit, Yuuri."

* * *

Thursday came at last, Yuuri's favorite day of the week. He gazed down multiple times at his watch hoping that time would pass faster. Victor invited him to go eat 'heart-attack' food and have coffee. They both drank enough caffeine that another cup in the evening won't affect their sleep.

Yuuri signed out his patients to the night float team and headed for the team call room to meet Victor. He grinned on his way up the stairs because Lilia actually told him that he 'got better', then shortly after, 'almost at the level of an intern.' She had her ways of lighting fires under people's asses. The new doctors couldn't help but to try to impress her. She was that kind of person. Every day she came to work put together, with not a single stray hair from her slick bun on top of her head and fresh, spotless white coats pressed with crisp lines.

He hung his white coat with _Y. Katsuki M.D._ on the sleeve inside the closet and turned his pager off as it went to sleep with one last twitch.

He stepped into the restroom within the residents' area for a second and stared at his own reflection. He didn't 'burn' his other tie, as his best friend suggested, he left it at the corner of his closet and ordered a thinner, black, Phichit-approved one online. Who had time to go shopping during residency? He patted a few strand of stray hair down with some water, and jumped as he heard the beeping of someone punching in the code to enter the call room from the outside.

Victor greeted him as he took off his white coat and hung it inside the closet, "ready?"

Yuuri nodded, "are we going to pick up Luke?"

Victor scratched his head, "Mila insisted again that I have some time for myself, she's too good."

"Where are we going?" Yuuri slung his brown bag across his shoulder, shaking the fatigue from an entire day of inpatient. His body had gotten used to it already. He mastered the skills of passing out in an instant once his body hit a flat surface and roll out of bed and get ready with the speed of lightning.

Victor's grin reached his eyes, "Eh? My guilty pleasure...it's something I discovered when I was in Canada, the owner of this little gem of a place happen to be from Quebec, you'll see."

The poutine tasted out of this world. They sat under the umbrella next to the diner by the ocean. Between them a bristle of lilac spilled out of a plain porcelain vase with blue rim.

"I have been addicted to this ever since I came back from a conference in Montreal five years ago," Victor lifted his fork as he watched the molten cheese make strings, "I could never forget that one."

Yuuri almost dropped his fork, his heart accelerating. _That conference...that was the last time I really drank...and Victor and I ended up in his hotel. He can't possibly remember, or else he would bring it up right? I have no idea what we did at his hotel, except I didn't feel anything different the day after. And fuck, that video..._ Phichit filmed him screaming on top of his lungs, _'Victor! I believe in you!'_ Yuuri resorted to pretending to have eaten too fast and coughed.

"You okay?" Victor laughed at him as he patted him on the back.

"...yea, I am used to eating fast...you know, while I can," he spluttered, at least now he had a legitimate reason to blush, "Victor, this is amazing! I can't believe I haven't found this place after living here all of my life." Victor was an excellent tour guide, who showed him parts of his own hometown in complete different light.

"You should always eat lunch during residency, Yuuri," Victor took another big bite.

Damn it, _he is beautiful even when he eats,_ Yuuri then brushed the other thoughts from his imagination away.

"There was that one day last week, I was so grateful that Otabek is my med student," he laughed as he relived those 'fond' memories, "Lilia yelled at me for not prioritizing, and I forgot to eat because the pager won't stop. Then Otabek gave me his granola bar without saying anything at three p.m. Then I forgot how long it had been since I was on the same computer, when the last time was I got up and went to the bathroom. I guess I was really focused on that day."

"Well, from now on, as your senior resident, I will have to text you reminders then to eat lunch," Victor flashed him a 'stern dad' kind of look.

* * *

Victor walked next to him and stopped in front of a small cafe with the faded blue wooden sign that said "Cosmos" on it with constellations studded on the background. He pulled the door open as the wooden wind chime that had stars and the moon at the end welcomed them.

There was something peaceful about this place. Inside the wooden tables of various sizes lining the walls, with matching chairs that looked like they were made from bamboo. All the way at the end was an ancient piano, that must have been more than two hundred years old from the elaborate carvings along its edge.

"Hi Yuri," Victor waved at the young man behind the counter in a dark green apron holding a broom, "I brought a friend today."

The young man who appeared around eighteen glanced at Yuuri but didn't smile, he pursed his lips and nodded.

"This is Yuuri, we work together," Victor walked up to the counter.

"Where's Luke, I have something for him?" He rested the broom against the wall and rummaged through the drawer until he passed a yellow CD with a clear case with the messy scrawl "To Luke: untitled - Yuri Plisetsky".

"You didn't have to," Victor was taken aback as he accepted the gift with grace, "I look forward to it."

Yuri turned towards the coffee machine.

 _They know each other very well,_ Victor didn't need to order. Yuuri noted.

Victor grinned as he insisted on paying for both of their drinks. The aroma of caffeine, of wood seeped into all of parts of Yuuri's body, cleansing the heavy fatigue that accumulates throughout the week. Victor carried his large dark blue mug with planets on it towards the table by the tall glass window, while Yuuri waited for his drink.

"I know what you want with him," To Yuuri's horror the blonde teenager muttered under his breath, "hurt him and I will fucking kick your ass."

Yuuri's eyes widened, "excuse me?" He took a step back.

"You heard me, asshole, you don't deserve to share the same name as I." Yuri Plisetsky whispered as he tossed him a venomous look. Then another customer stepped closer to the counter within earshot. Through his curtain of golden hair down his chin his face switched into a brilliant smile that could melt glaciers and move a mountain, "have a nice evening," he finished with his normal voice.

 _What the hell?_ Yuuri was puzzled as to the reason this eighteen year old seemed fiercely protective of Victor. _Am I that transparent? Who is he anyways?_ He sighed and put a dollar into the tip jar because he decided to be the bigger person, as the other Yuri watched him from the corner of his forest green eyes.

He made his way back to Victor with a mocha in his hand in a blue mug with the swirling galaxies painted on the side, he inhaled its aroma along his way.

"I spent most weekends here when I first moved here," Victor sipped his coffee, "I studied here while Lukas slept. He glanced outside at the cobblestone street. The atmosphere of this place resembled a hidden alley in an ancient city, where most tourist couldn't find, "Chris is the only person I know here." Victor turned to watch the sun being swallowed by the low rooftops outside.

"It must be kind of lonely," Yuuri watched the sky shed its cloak of the day.

"No, it was better this way," Victor pulled his pill bottle from his pocket and took his evening pills with his coffee. Yuuri already saw the names of three antidepressants that he took. He didn't have anything to hide anymore, "I am going to be honest, when my ex-wife started openly cheating on me with one of the hospital administrators, it was hard going back to work. My attendings knew, all of the medical students whispered about it, the last straw was when my patient asked me about it. That's not what I cared about. I am past the point of caring what others think of me." His blue-green eyes still transfixed on the last orange rays amidst the roofs, "it was...everything in my life was a reminder of...her."

Yuuri granted him the gift of silence.

"We met in medical school, in the same hospital where we both stayed as residents afterwards. She was the one that wouldn't give up until I took her out on a date. Everything in that hospital reminded me of her, the streets, the coffee shops, all of our friends, that entire city...Lukas looks exactly like her, and she abandoned him. Makkachin was a puppy when we first decided to move in together, we were wide eyed medical students ready to conquer the world back then."

"I'm sorry...I can't even imagine what you have gone through," Yuuri didn't meet his eyes, he continued watching the sunset from the window. His chest felt heavy, it wasn't fair for someone like Victor to go through all of this. Victor, who started multiple free clinics for the uninsured and undocumented outside of his busy class and work hours. Of all of the people in the medical world who was full of shit, Victor was not one of them.

"That was...the second time I felt love," a sad glimmer filled Victor's ocean coloured eyes.

"Your first?" Yuuri blurted out.

Victor stared at him and didn't answer.

Music notes begun to play in the background, like one of those bad romance movies. Only the melody of the piano was so beautiful that Yuuri couldn't help but turn around to find Yuri Plisetsky's hands fly across the black and white keys, sometimes crisscrossing. His hands pale against the darkness of the wood of the ancient upright piano at the end of the coffee shop, against the dying light of the sun. Yuuri wondered within his mind, _how could someone with such horrible personality create something to so stunning_. He watched the eighteen year old finish the rest of the song that he had never heard before with his jaw open.

The entire cafe bursted into applause as Yuuri and Victor joined them.

An old man with salt and pepper beard wearing the same green apron as Yuri chuckled and applauded, "that's my grandson." He turned on a switch as lightbulbs over each table glowed warm gold.

"This is why I came here all the time Yuuri," Victor's face lit up.

In that moment, he didn't look like someone who took three antidepressants every day.

"I can't believe I don't know about this after living in this city all of my life," Yuuri's stared at the teenager who hissed at him earlier with new admiration.

"He wrote all that on his own," Victor then turned and greeted the old man.

"Ah, Dr. Victor," the old man smiled, "I see, you brought a friend today." His glance fell upon Yuuri.

"His name is also Yuuri," Victor introduced him as he heard a sudden sound like fingernails skidding across a chalkboard as Yuri Plisetsky pushed the stool in front of the piano and stood up while glaring at Yuuri, hostility thick in the air.

"My socially awkward grandson doesn't have any friends his age, other than that cat and you, Dr. Victor," Nikolai Plisetsky chuckled, "Yuuri, can you help him?"

"Grandpa!" Yuri stormed into the kitchen, leaving the angry doors swinging.

"S-sure," Yuuri let out an awkward chuckle as he watched Victor and Yuri's grandfather burst out in laughter.

They said goodbye to Yuri's grandfather, and left their coffee shop. Victor explained Mr. Plisetsky was a retired astronomer, hence the name 'Cosmos'.

They walked down the cobblestone street, enjoying the serenity of the dusk.

"Yuuri, do something crazy," Victor broke the silence as they watched moths encircle the orange glow of the street lamp that casted their shadows on the ground like a forbidden dance. Victor pulled his hands out of his pocket, his carefree smile that reminded Yuuri of the Victor he watched and admired in the past. The Victor who inspired him to become a doctor in the first place.

"Um...like what?" Yuuri raised an eyebrow. There were no one on this little street. They passed by a small mom-and-pop flower shop. The aroma of lilac and roses hit them as the owner carried the last bucket of sunflowers inside to prepare for closing.

One block from the flower shop was an alley in between two street lamps. They must have been trying to preserve the historical part of this town.

Yuuri took a deep breathe, "fine," he walked into the ancient alley, in his mind's eye he imagined one hundred years ago the hooves of horses clicking on the cobblestone street accompanied by the creaking wheels of the carriages.

Victor followed him with curiosity.

He didn't know where his courage came from, maybe it was the number of times he was pushed out of his comfort zone as an intern, the number of times where he was so scared until he wasn't scared anymore. Perhaps it came from the times he stood up for patients, and fought for them tooth and nail to make sure their needs were addressed. Another possibility was because of Victor, who raised him up in his darkest hours.

Yuuri took a slow and deliberate step forwards until they stood face to face, their chests inches apart.

He grabbed Victor's tie and kissed him.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

Cliffhanger!

Story time:

Phichit and Yuuri's friendship in this story reminds me of my best friend and I.

I met her when we were ten. We went to the same middle school. She was the popular one, I was the quiet nerdy kid who watched Gundam Wing, was good at school, read Harry Potter too many times & loved to draw and write. We never hung out inside the school because her friends were the 'in crowd' whom I had nothing in common with. Nevertheless, we walked home together and remained close. She is one of those people even if we live in different countries now, when we meet it still feels like not a day have passed. I was recently her maid of honour, almost twenty years later.

Fast forward to the adult world, one of the best things my husband said to me was "I don't like the 'cool kids', they are boring, I much prefer the weirdos."

Growing up, I made peace with my inner weirdo & it hit me at one point I truly didn't give a shit what people think of me anymore. Being in my profession amplified that some more.

Then I became happier.

-A

antarespromise . tumblr . com

* * *

Re:Reviews:

AiViCi: Thursdays are underrated! Hope you enjoy this one!

SmartieAndNerdy: Thanks so much for your kind words, creating this story was so much fun.

KisunaFuji: thank you!

MissMJS: Hope you enjoy this one! Thanks for your support as always!


	5. Chapter 5: That Night

The crazier part was Victor was kissing him back, his lips still had a hint of the coffee taste. Victor cupped his face with his hands and ran his fingers through his black locks, stealing air from his lungs.

Yuuri's hand still clasped onto his tie, his eyes widened, not expecting this response. Heat crept up his face, he closed his eyes and felt Victor's long eyelashes brushing past his cheek. He wanted time to stop. He let go of Victor's tie and wrapped his arms around his waist, closing in the space between them.

"Yuuri, five years ago, Montreal...do you...remember?" Victor whispered in between kisses.

Yuuri froze, that medical conference, that embarrassing video in Phichit's phone, the hotel..."no...I mean...yes..." he wasn't sure what to say, "in bits and pieces," he couldn't breathe.

Victor pulled back, their foreheads still touching, "I remember that night, it took everything for me to forget you afterwards, Yuuri. I promised myself to never look for you because I wanted to love my wife with my entire being, it wouldn't be fair to her otherwise..."

Yuuri averted his gaze, embarrassed, Victor forced him to lock his warm brown eyes with his blue-green ones. Yuuri's heart felt like it would flip flop out of his chest at any moment, "well, I couldn't forget about you, Victor..."

"This sounds completely crazy, Yuuri, I am not a believer of love at first sight...but meeting you was different", It was his turn to blush, "I can't put it in words, it's completely irrational, makes no sense."

Yuuri leaned in and kissed him again, deeper and fiercer than ever before. When he finally pulled away he looked up at the man he admired from the distance all along, the one he put on a pedestal his entire life and sweated bullets to catch up to. He was the most beautiful person he had ever seen up close in flesh and blood, even with the hint of sadness lingering in those eyes as deep as the ocean, and the little wrinkles around his eyes the imperfections on his skin up close, "Victor, did we..." _do it that night,_ was what he meant to say.

"It took all of my self restraint," Victor pulled him close, "you were in my hotel and asking for it, literally," the tips of their nose touched, "I couldn't...take advantage of you like that. I wanted more, I wanted to get to know you, sober, I wanted to have coffee with you, I wanted to go to places with you..."

Yuuri's face burnt, as he recounted the every little embarrassing detail of that night in fragments, reminding himself it was the reason he stopped drinking, "so we didn't..."

Victor shook his head, "I wrote my phone number and tucked it into your pocket and drove you back," Victor pressed his firm chest against Yuuri's as he shook his head, "I wished for the one millionth chance that you would call."

Yuuri suddenly recalled pulling out the rumpled piece of paper out of his pocket after doing laundry when he came back home, thinking it must have been an old faded receipt," I didn't know..." he sighed deeply.

"Then I looked for you, like a creepy stalker, on social media, but had no success," Victor touched his outline and let out an embarrassed chuckle, "the only thing I knew was your full name, from your event ID."

Unlike Phichit, Yuuri neglected his social media sites. He didn't even bother putting a picture on his profile. He had a small close circle of friends, and that was enough for him. Plus being neck deep in medical training does not fare well for keeping in touch for old times sake, "I'm sorry," Yuuri rubbed his eyes, looking for the comfort of his glasses, but finding nothing there because he put on contact lenses instead.

"Then one year later I met my wife, and I promised I'd give her everything and I did," his blue-green eyes glistened, reflecting the glow from the dim street lamps," he interlaced both his hands within Yuuri's, "I promised myself never try looking for you after that, because we met once, because none of it made sense."

Yuuri imagined Victor, hand in hand with a beautiful woman with long golden hair and brown eyes the same shade as his son's. They must have been envied of everyone. Both bright, talented, top of every class...a perfect picture from the outsider's view.

Perplexed, Yuuri kissed the back of his hand, "so then...why...did you move to this city." He emphasized the first word. He knew Victor came from a prestigious residency program, with his achievements, he could go anywhere.

Victor leaned against the brick wall and ran his other hand through his hair like starlight, "this is going to sound completely insane, again," he took a deep breath and sighed, "I have know Chris all my life, and...I am going to be honest we fooled around in college, but we both knew it wasn't going anywhere so we made a conscious decision to purge those memories and to stay friends, anyways...Chris knew about my divorce, and when my second antidepressant didn't work anymore, he suggested what if I had a change of scenery? Chris always made fun of me about that night when I met you, I...told him when I lost a bet to him. But in hindsight, it was the best thing I have ever done -"

Yuuri lips parted, his heart was thumping so fast it took his breaths away, he knew where Victor was going next.

"Chris saw your name on the poster of the new residents starting here and he sent me a picture...and I remembered that afternoon I was...having dark thoughts that I refused to act upon because I am everything that Luke has...I am sorry Yuuri, I sound completely pathetic...yes, I admit it, I figured fuck it all, we only live once," Victor clawed at the back of Yuuri's shirt, "I sold and donated most of the things my wife and I had together, packed my life into two suitcases, and bought a one way ticket...I didn't think we'd meet again," tears begun to swirl in his blue green eyes, he let them fall. A hot drop fell onto the back of Yuuri's hand, "I'm sorry...I am such a train-wreck and a creepy stalker."

Yuuri wiped his tears away, and pressed Victor's head against his shoulder protectively, just as Victor placed a hand on his shoulders on his first week as a doctor and he was internally panicking when his patient went into cardiac arrest, "Shh...you are not a creep...I am probably the bigger creepier stalker in comparison," he ran his fingers through Victor's soft hair, "Victor, I have known of you for a long time, from the free clinics you started, to the overseas trips, everything you did was genuine...then I looked deep within myself and realized I wanted to do the same...I became a doctor because of you...Victor, in my eyes you are perfect." He was breathless, his pulse pounded in his ear. He never felt more naked in his life.

"That's as far as I'd ever be," Victor trembled a little.

"That night, my best friend convinced me to...take a few shots beforehand, otherwise I wouldn't have had the courage to talk to you," Yuuri was now past the point of feeling embarrassed. Victor opened up to him, and he decided to do the same, "Victor, I wanted you all along. Even before I met you."

"I'm so glad, Yuuri" Victor buried his face into his shoulder, "you have no idea."

In slow and subtle ways the perfect, untouchable man in Yuuri's mind was beginning to transform, into someone tangible, real, vulnerable, in flesh and blood and acknowledging his flaws. He knew, Victor wasn't in the position to start anything new right now, he needed time, and space, he couldn't forget someone so soon after being married and having a child with that person. And he decided he would wait and give Victor that space, for as long he needed, "Victor, I can see you are not in a place right now to start anything new, I know you still need time...to heal, to learn to love yourself first...but I want you to know I am not going anywhere. I will be right here when you are ready." He handed Victor some tissue that he happened to have in his back pocket and let the soft silver locks glide through his fingers.

Victor wiped his face, at loss for words, and nodded. "Thanks, I'll do my best...you have no idea how much that meant to me," he smiled through his red rimmed eyes, "doctors make the worst patients right?"

Yuuri nodded in agreement and grinned, "yea, and the worst stalkers apparently."

Victor laughed, "that makes two of us."

* * *

Yuuri wanted to read a few articles before meeting up with Victor on Saturday to take Luke to get his one year old vaccines before heading to the beach. Victor said Luke would appreciate the moral support. Yuuri went for his run that morning, time wasn't passing fast enough. He pushed himself further than before until his shirt was soaked and his wet hair was plastered to his head. He went home showered and gazed down at his phone anticipating a message from his favourite med student. Phichit went out drinking last night, he told Yuuri he wouldn't be able to wake up.

Yuuri's face literally turned blue when Otabek, who also needed to remove himself from his own apartment to be able to study, wanted to meet at Cosmos. He couldn't bring himself to explain to his medical student the reason for wanting to meet at a different location. _Of all coffee shops.._.Yuuri grumbled, a picture of Yuri Plisetsky's venomous gaze flashed through his mind. He had no clue what went in the heads of eighteen year olds these days. _Maybe he won't be there...his grandfather seems nice..._ Yuuri was hopeful.

The wooden wind chime with stars at the end greeted him as he pushed the door open. Outside a motorcycle parked in front of the shot, in all of its glistening dark glory. _Looks like Otabek beat me to it.._.He saw a flash of gold behind the counters and his heart sank. He turned around quickly to avoid eye contact and nodded at Otabek.

They have never seen each other outside of the hospital, in dress shirts, ties, and a long white coat for Yuuri, while a short one for Otabek. Otabek gazed up at him and nodded.

"You again," Yuri's forest green eyes narrowed, "where's Victor?" Yuuri remembered how fiercely protective this strange teenager was towards Victor, including seeing straight through how he felt about his senior resident.

"I...am meeting him later," Yuuri didn't know why he blurted it out, he didn't owe him an explanation.

Yuri made a noise, and poured coffee into a giant red retro mug with astronauts on the side. Yuuri noticed that every mug in this cafe was different.

"Who's that?" Yuri jerked his chin in Otabek's direction. Otabek had his stoic expression by default and tied to the spiral of his notebook was a piece of string that he threw knots with his left hand without even thinking about it. Otabek came to medical school to become a surgeon.

"Otabek, my med student," Yuuri handed him a five dollar bill, the air thick with hostility somehow changed when Yuri glanced at the way Otabek's fingers moved as he practiced to throw knots on a piece of suture fastened to the spiral of his notebook. Yuuri put a dollar in the tip jar with a scribble resembling a cat on it as he escaped with his coffee. _I can deal with the most difficult patients, the drug seekers, but I don't know why I can't deal with teenagers..._ he smiled a little mocking himself.

Otabek wore a simple black T-shirt and black jeans ripped at the knees. His sculpted muscles filled the black sleeves. To look like that, Yuuri knew, took discipline. He probably worked out every day.

"Nice bike," Yuuri gazed outside, "Med student would not be my first guess if I didn't know you."

Otabek laughed as he threw a few more knots, "I have been told."

"You are going to be so ready when you rotate through surgery," Yuuri was amazed by his motivation, and more than impressed with his humbleness. Otabek was the best medical student he ever had, and more than that, he was becoming a friend. They were similar, quiet, hard working, down to earth, and less full of shit than most people working in medicine.

"I can't wait, though...pediatrics comes before it," Otabek looked troubled.

Yuuri laughed, "I have no idea what to do with children either," he took a sip from the wide red mug, "pediatricians are like a different species, I have so much respect for them...especially those who take care of teenagers..."

Different specialties naturally attracted different personalities, Yuuri believed medicine was diverse enough that there was something for everyone.

Yuuri pulled out his tablet and opened his articles. The aroma of coffee and the sunlight through the large window comforting, he could catch a glimpse of the ocean two streets down. He gazed down at his watch wishing time would pass faster.

An hour went by in silence, Yuuri asked for another mug of coffee. The sound of the piano filled the air.

Otabek glanced over his shoulder at the back of Yuri's blond locks just past his chin.

Yuuri's stomach lurched uncomfortably because the music today sounded sinister for some reason, resembling the background of a movie involving an alien invasion. He wondered if that was because of his presence.

Yuri's hands lingered around the lower notes, as arpeggios filled the air. There was a loneliness to it, the accompaniment without the melody.

Otabek released the suture that contained a row of perfect knots and stood up. He made his way to the piano. Yuri glanced at him with curiosity as Otabek stood behind the ancient piano bench decorated with elaborate wooden carving and leaned down towards the keyboard until their shoulders almost touched.

Using only his right hand over the high notes he gave Yuri's music a melody. The atmosphere changed. Instead of sounding like an alien movie, the music flowed like a river before the rapids, building and releasing tension in ripples and waves. Heads turned at the sheer beauty as they improvised.

Yuuri couldn't help but become mesmerized. He knew Yuri wrote his own music, his talent was real, he was definitely more than good enough to be a concert pianist. He couldn't believe Otabek could play like _that_.

A hint of a smile hung at the corner of Yuri's lips as he gestured with his head for Otabek to sit down.

Otabek settled close to him on the narrow piano bench, their bodies almost touching. He used both hands this time, over the high notes along with the melody, leading Yuri's accompanying low pitch in perfect harmony. They didn't need words because Otabek remembered his chord progression and adjusted the melody accordingly.

Yuuri wasn't sure how much time passed until Yuri's accompaniment grew softer and softer along with Otabek's melody until they came to a perfect cadence.

"Amazing!" Yuri's ice melting smile lit up the entire cafe.

Otabek grinned back without saying anything.

"Play something for me," Yuri couldn't help but grasp onto his elbow, then realizing it he let go. He slid off the bench to make room.

"For you..." Otabek paused for a few moments and put his foot on the pedal. His right thumb started on G.

Yuuri started to wonder whether Yuri had that personality disorder that split people into 'all good or all bad' or was simply behaving like Victor's overprotective little brother. He now understood the reason Otabek was so good with his hands tying those knots as he watched his hands fly across the keyboard.

"Moonlight sonata!" Yuri instantly recognized the piece, beaming.

Otabek grinned back.

Yuuri sighed and went back to his coffee. _Maybe I did help this little weirdo find a friend_ , he couldn't help but smile to himself as he remembered Yuri's grandfather's words. Piano, aspiring surgeon, and med student would not be the three first words to leap to mind at first glance for Otabek. Otabek never ceased to suprise him.

* * *

"Sorry for dragging you all the way here," Victor met him in the waiting room of the pediatrics clinic with the teddy bear painted on the walls. Luke sat on his lap, and reached for a strand of his silver locks and tugged, "hey," Victor gently pried Luke's chubby fingers open one by one, "good thing I don't have long hair anymore."

Yuuri blushed because of things he fantasized about that could not be said out loud involved Victor's long hair, "it's no problem, hey Luke," he waved, as the little boy smiled at him, "he's not scared of me anymore."

Victor grinned.

"I have so much respect for pediatricians, they look so happy, or maybe they are pretending to be sometimes," Yuuri said with a low voice, "the amount of patience they have is remarkable."

"I know right," Victor lifted Luke up and watched him giggle.

Around them, other parents waited with their kids to be seen, some cried, knowing it was the day to get needles, other older children played with their parent's phone in silence.

"Lukas Damien Nikiforov," a medical assistant opened the glass door.

Victor smiled and he picked up his son, as Yuuri helped with the stroller to head inside.

"Congrats you two, he's so beautiful," The medical assistant with a round face and freckles, hair in pigtails who looked like she just graduated said without thinking.

Yuuri spluttered and blushed. _She thought we are his two dads..._

Victor couldn't stop laughing, he decided to free Yuuri from this awkward moment when he said with his gentle voice, "actually, he is a friend of mine."

It was the medical assistant's turn to blush, "I am so sorry, I shouldn't have assumed..."

"It's alright," Victor's hand was still trembling from silent laughter as he watched Yuuri, who also joined him.

* * *

"He's awesome," Yuuri exclaimed after Lukas returned to himself after braving through the needles like a champion. He hardly really cried.

"Right?" Victor put on his sunglasses. _He looked like a model out of a page from a magazine,_ Yuuri thought as he realized he was staring at the place where Victor's top button was undone for too long.

They headed for the boardwalk by the beach, listening to its crashing waves and the sound of the seagulls and children's laughter in the distance. Lukas dozed off within minutes inside his stroller. Victor pulled the shaded part of the stroller a little lower.

Yuuri's awareness of the beautiful man next to him was heightened, especially after that confession. He couldn't wait, he wanted more than that kiss. But he knew, Victor still needed time. His hand accidentally brushed against the back of Victor's hands.

Then Victor did something that made his heart leap, he intertwined his fingers within Yuuri's, "I hope you don't mind."

Yuuri shook his head and squeezed Victor's slender fingers. He wanted to pinch himself at that moment, to make sure that everything was not conjured by his imagination.

* * *

Author's Note:

I have been playing the piano for a number of years, writing this chapter was a treat.

Even though this story does not reflect my personal experience, there are significant numbers of people in the medical profession with depression & there is stigma around seeking help. I wanted to portray getting help in a positive light.

Seriousness aside, hope you enjoyed the lighthearted moments here.

Victor is slowly but surely on his way of finding happiness.

Leave me a review if you enjoyed my story!

-A

antarespromise . tumblr . com

* * *

Re: Reviews

Guest: Thanks so much! Otabek did come to Cosmos! Phichit saved that video to make fun of Yuuri...hope you enjoyed this one!

MissMJS: I know that last chapter ending was evil. Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Yes, everyone needs a friend like Phichit. And sometimes that's more than enough.

willie-chan: yes, Cosmos by Carl Sagan is amazing. If I was to open a cafe, that's what it would look like. I love astronomy, the funny part of it in reality so much of astronomy is physics and math and much less romantic than the gazing up into the stars with a telescope. Thanks so much for reading & leaving me your kind words.


	6. Chapter 6: I'll Be

**Disclaimer:**

All names and events in this story are fictional. I do not own Yuri on ice characters.

* * *

Yuuri almost dropped his phone when he got the text from Phichit.

His stomach tightened into a knot from worry.

Phichit was on night float, which was a month of working at night that most residents dreaded, and he fell asleep while driving home. On one hand Yuuri was glad that his friend was well enough to send him a text, but on the other hand he received it only a few minutes before Phichit was going to be wheeled into the operating room. The bones of his right forearm were fractured completely that they had to take him to surgery right away.

Yuuri wondered how he was able to still able to text him, he could have called him instead, _that's something only Phichit would do._ He imagined his friend, hooked up to an IV, and instead of scrubs being in a hospital gown, delirious from pain and the medications, fumbling with his fingers to send the text and scrolling through his Instagram one more time. It must be strange for a doctor to watch everything unfold from the patient's point of view.

Yuuri needed a moment, he gulped his coffee a little too fast and made his way back to the call room. His stomach protested.

Victor sat by the table with his laptop, his eyes lit up as Yuuri walked in the room, but he frowned when he saw Yuuri's expression, "you alright?"

Yuuri sank into the chair next to him, "It's Phichit." He told Victor what happened.

Even though they were the only ones in the call room, work was work, they kept their professional distance and refused to become one of those scene from those stupid medical dramas. Yuuri wanted nothing more than having Victor's arms around him. Victor leaned closer until Yuuri could feel his comforting warmth.

Outside of the hospital, they have walked hand in hand, exchanged brief goodbye kisses, but Yuuri stopped himself from going any further, because he knew Victor still needed time to heal. His wounds were still too fresh.

Then his phone rang, it was his program director Dr. Cialdini, who had a loud, good natured laugh and long hair pulled into a ponytail, "Yuri, how are you?"

"I'm alright," he answered reflexively, a little nervous when he saw his program director's name appear on a pending call.

"Listen, I know you and Phichit are close, I wanted to check in on you," his authoritative voice was kind.

"Thank you, I appreciate that," Yuuri felt numb, as he spewed these words.

Celestino paused, "While he is going into surgery, we need you to cover night float."

Yuuri's heart raced, it was one rotation he dreaded since the beginning, "alright, thanks." He hung up and whispered in his mind, _fuck_. The truth was, being alone at night covering fifty patient was the one thing he dreaded the most about starting. He would have senior residents if he needed help, but they were usually slammed with doing admissions in the emergency department. He knew he would not be truly alone at night, because of the patient crashed he could call the ICU. If he had questions there was a senior resident and attending available. _What if I miss something critical? What if someone dies and it's my fault? What if my EKG read is wrong? How would the patients' family members found out the one taking care of their loved ones was a doctor for exactly one month..._ he gulped, a wave of nausea washed over him.

Victor placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, "we've all been there, it gets better," He read Yuuri's thoughts, "you are never alone in the hospital...and you can call me anytime."

"Thanks," Yuuri mumbled before his pager vibrated at his belt.

* * *

Yuuri took a deep breath as he sat in the conference room next to his senior for the evening Jean Jacques Leroy, who wore the same unfazed look as Victor on his face. Yuuri wondered if he could look like that one year from now.

The way the other teams looked like them resembled vultures encircling their meal. Because once they signed their patients out to night float, they could go home.

One by one they briefed their patients to Yuuri and JJ, and their list of labs to follow up on for the evening and contingency plans. Yuuri nodded, asked questions and madly scribbled on the side of the sign out sheets to create his to-do list.

At last, it was over, he heard the door close after the last of the day team left. Yuuri stared at the pile of sign out lists in his hand, he was pretty sure his blood pressure was through the roofs at this moment.

JJ's pager vibrated and he stood up and picked up the phone, "Night float JJ speaking...you got it." He scribbled something. JJ wore the hospital's aquamarine robes, revealing his muscles bulging from its short sleeve, "where is the patient? Okay, thanks."

"New admission?" Yuuri gathered his pile of sign out sheets and clung to them for dear life.

"Yea, heading down," JJ picked up his fresh perfectly pressed white coat from the back of the plastic blue chair and swung it over his shoulder, "you got this Yuuri. Let me know if you need anything." He flashed a smile revealing perfect teeth. He was the resident that the nurses and medical students gossiped about the most. He was brilliant, like Phichit and confident like Victor. Before him, Yuuri couldn't help but feel small. Some thought JJ was cocky, but at same time he had the intelligence and intuition to back it up.

Then Yuuri was alone. He logged into the computer to look over the chart if the sickest patients he was asked to look out for. Then the ping sound from his phone distracted him. It was from Victor.

 **I have something for you.**

 **Are you in the conference room?**

Yuuri couldn't help but smell a little as he wrote back.

 **You didn't have to. Yea, we just finished sign out.**

Five minutes later, Yuuri heard the beeping from the door as Victor punched in the code. In his hand a small black pouch that resembled a traveling kit.

"Here," he handed it to Yuuri, "this is what happens since I've become a dad," Victor laughed and scratched his head, "I keep extras of everything in my car." he pulled the blue plastic chair out and sat down next to him.

Yuuri wanted to hide his blush, he unzipped the pouch, and was at a loss for words for a few seconds. Because inside was filled snacks, tooth brush, toothpaste, gum, and everything he wish he had because he didn't have time to go home today, "t-thank you." A warm sensation rose from the pit of his stomach and spread through his entire body.

Victor then pulled out a pair of blue scrubs from his bag swung over his shoulder, "I got you fresh scrubs".

Yuuri had been dying to change out of his dress shirt and dark trousers into the comfort of scrubs. He accepted them, his lips curled up. They smelled like Victor.

"You'll be fine, Yuuri, good luck," Victor squeezed his shoulder before leaving, his smile reached his eyes. Yuuri didn't know since when Victor begun to smile more. He watched him long enough to be able to tell that was real, and not the tight lipped version that Victor used to paste onto his face.

"Hopefully...and thanks again," When Yuuri heard the door close his hand landed on the place where Victor touched him, holding onto the lingering warmth. He wondered if Phichit woke up from the anesthesia.

* * *

After addressing a slew of pages, he decided to visit his best friend. It was time for nurses to changed shifts, he knew the pager would go off a little less around now.

"Yuuri," The head of Phichit's bed was raised, his eyes lit up.

Relief washed through Yuuri as he saw Phichit eating while scrolling through instagram. Of course, Instagram, he was a minor celebrity on there. He could imagine Phichit tagging #orthopedics #post surgery #recovery #doctor as patient.

"I'm glad you are alright," Yuuri sat down in the chair next to him.

Phichit was in the grey hospital gown, and his right arm completely wrapped, tethered to the IV pole. He pressed the button that gave him another shot of pain medication through the IV, "I never know this stuff could make me so sleepy," he remarked and put down his fork, "you curious what hospital food tastes like?" He grinned.

"Not really," Yuuri glanced at his tray, containing mashed potatoes, green beans, and chicken, "though on days where I didn't have time to eat lunch, and the dietary guy brings his cart around, I have definitely thought about stealing food from there."

Phichit snorted, "I hear you," he lifted his fork with another bite awkwardly with his left hand, "I am sorry that because of my accident you got fucked over with covering night float.

Yuuri shrugged, "it is what it is, welcome to residency."

"I guess that what happens when one of us taps out or are sick, someone else gets fucked over," Phichit put down his fork, "imagine what would happen if residents one day go on strike, and the attendings have to cover entire floors at night. Imagine Baranovskaya carrying the pager..."

Yuuri bursted out laughing, "she would eat everyone alive..."

"Last night was a disaster," Phichit's face more serious again, "I had to have a family meeting because one of the patients is going to crash at any second, and she expressed not wanting to go to the ICU or be intubated, while her daughter from out of town who was very demanding told us her mom doesn't know what she's talking about and she wanted everything done and would sue us if we don't. I had to prove it to the daughter that her mom is coherent and knew exactly what was going on. While all this was happening, someone called a rapid response. I had to cal JJ up from the ED for back up."

"That must have been rough," Yuuri prayed that tonight would be better.

"Yea, by the time I was done documenting my conversation and that rapid response, and the note to transfer the patient to the ICU, I was so tired I knew I should not have driven, but I wasn't going to spend another minute inside this hospital. I can't believe I fell asleep, my car was totaled." Phichit sighed, "could you feed my hamsters if I don't get out by tomorrow?"

"Sure, you can hardly feed yourself," Yuuri replied with sarcasm, "I can't believe you keep pets".

"That's what you are for," Phichit smiled at his best friend, "and one more thing, you came to work the other morning with that look on your face, you slept with him didn't you."

Yuuri froze, exasperated, even in his current state, Phichit could still not forget about gossip. He knew every juicy detail about everyone in the hospital, and he could read Yuuri like an open book, "shh, we are at work," he whispered loudly, "and for fuck's sake, you just had major surgery...and your still can't stop gossiping...I can't even..."

"But you did!" Phichit whispered back with a big stupid grin on his face.

"That's my business...I have to go check on patient," Yuuri smirked and stood up, he knew the best way of torturing this gossip machine was to withhold information, "see ya." Yuuri wished he did, it was something he fantasized about for an embarrassingly long time.

He let out another sigh of relief as Phichit was alright, though he still worried would his best friend type ten notes in the morning using only one hand when he returned to work.

As he walked down the sterile white hall, waves of anxiety plagued him again. Soon his pager would vibrate again, as the nurses complete sign out. He returned to the call room, the sheets were changed, he knew that night float never got to sleep at night.

He freed his pager from his belt and stared at it. He started to think it went off but it didn't. At last he decided to tuck it back on his waist and let it be.

He soon realized the pager could twitch in a different way he was paged by multiple nurses at the same time. He was always kind and polite to the nurses.

He was paged all night.

Time begun to blend together, twenty minutes felt like two hours. He would not have been able to tell the time without looking down at his phone. He broke into a cold sweat when a nurse paged him about a patient feeling short of breath. He remembered Victor's calm and unfazed voice. "Please take a set of vitals and I am on my way." He forced himself to sound as confident as possible. He remembered Victor saying sometimes if you fake it long enough, you could trick yourself into believing it.

The patient ended up needing his breathing treatments to be sooner than every six hours apart for his asthma exacerbation.

 _Okay. That wasn't so bad._ The patient felt much better after an additional treatment with the nebulizer. He pressed the down button to the elevator while the pager twitched again.

At last, a hint of light appeared over the eastern horizon, he was glad the call room had a window facing the ocean.

This small city did not have tall skyscrapers. He could see all of the rooftops, including the elegant domed top of City Hall. The horizon had a pink tings to it. He missed running in the morning at this time.

 _Thirty more minutes._

He ran his to-do-list one more time, all of the boxes were checked.

It was his turn to eagerly await the day teams to arrive in the conference room one by one. He was hoping to catch a glimpse of Victor in the morning.

JJ still looked fresh after that whole night. He patted Yuuri on the back, "good job, you made it through your first night."

Yuuri smiled, "thanks for your help."

JJ nodded.

Many residents despised JJ, because he was full of himself, but Yuuri saw past that. Like Victor, JJ was brilliant, confident, and hard working. If anything, Yuuri was envious the same way he felt about Phichit, who spent the least about of time studying yet aced every single class.

* * *

Night float sucked.

Working five nights in a row opened the Pandora's box of a myriad of emotions that he had hasn't experienced for a long time.

There was despair, as he watched a young couple in their 30s clung to each other lying in the hospital bed together and cried after the man was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer. He had nothing more to offer but silence and he left the room and gave them space. He felt as if he was being ripped in pieces watching them.

There was exasperation, when the patient found every excuse to refused to leave the hospital. _Why would anyone want to stay longer in a hospital? It's not a hotel._ He couldn't help but wonder how dire someone's life must be if their refuge was a hospital. He learnt people had their reasons. Some were homeless, others had family situations that he could not even imagine that the hospital became their respite, a temporary escape. He had to politely explain being in the hospital meant increased risk of catching a serious infection to try to convince someone who was clearly here for secondary gain and refused to leave. The hospital was a strange place, amidst the chaos, the non-stop pages, the hustle was the place where the brightest and the darkest parts of humanity congregated.

There was rage, after a lengthy family meeting that took careful co-ordination. The patient and the family decided that she would stop the chemotherapy and go home with only medications to keep her comfortable. But as soon as the day team left, one of the new oncology fellows told the patient that he had two years to live. _Who was he to know that?_ Yuuri walked into the chaos in the middle of multiple family members who flew in from different parts of the country to gather at their mother's bedside. He had to answer to their confusion, their last pleas for the final tendril of hope. He had to explain that nobody could tell for sure how long a patient had. Now they wanted everything. Yuuri gritted his teeth as he placed the orders for more blood draws. He remembered that patient crying every time the nurses tried to draw labs. She was so thin and fragile from the cancer the size of a cantaloupe in her belly. Her veins were flat and blue and purple from blood tests draining her life away. Yuuri wasn't sure if she had anymore blood to be taken. He thought she might crumble to dust if she fell.

There was hope too. He hasn't forgotten. Of reassurances that patient's chest pain wasn't a heart attack. Of watching another patient cry with relief after he explained the results of the ultrasound of her heart. She finally had an answer for her shortness of breath and fatigue after suffering for months, and it was fixable with surgery of replacing a heart valve. Of helping a patient come to terms with his addiction and agreeing checking himself into inpatient drug rehab. It was those moments that Yuuri clung onto, and reminded himself that everything he went through was worthwhile.

* * *

Saturday afternoon was beautiful, the sky was cloudless, there was a tinge of coolness in the September breeze. Yuuri went to visit Phichit while Victor had an appointment to with his psychiatrist.

Yuuri looked forward to visiting Victor afterwards.

"Yuuko is tapering me off my third antidepressants," Victor had a smile on his face as Yuuri stepped into his apartment. Dr. Nishigori was his psychiatrist, but she preferred for him to call her by her first name. She was the same age as Victor, and this was her first job fresh out of residency. Her desk was always decorated with various photos of her triplet and she changed them every few months or so.

"That's great news," Yuuri beamed, still lightheaded from sleep deprivation and jet lag. He sat down on his grey couch while Victor made tea. The couch was inviting and comforting underneath him. Makkachin wagged her tail as he felt her warm breaths on his hand. He wrapped his arms around her then rubbed her forehead. She hopped onto the couch and curled up next to him.

"How's Phichit?" Victor poured water into two white cups with turquoise lining the inside.

"He is in good spirits, on Instagram like usual...I made him food for the next two days before I left, otherwise knowing him, he would order take out or eat ramen, which can't be good for healing," he patted Makkachin's head now resting on his thigh.

"That's very thoughtful of you," Victor placed the two cups on round coasters with stars and galaxies on them on the coffee table.

Yuuri suspected those coasters had something to do with Cosmos, Victor's favorite coffee shop. He tried blocking the image of the angry blonde teenager who was fiercely protective of Victor out of his mind.

"You know, I was talking to Yuuko today about things you made me realize...watching everything you have done for Phichit," his blue-green eyes pensive as he sat down next to Yuuri. Makkachin got up, as if knowing everything that went on to make space for Victor, "I remembered when my ex-wife and I used to fight, when we're both interns, and she told me that I was the most selfish person she had ever met, and that I thought I was the only one in residency...and she was right...it wasn't only her, it's my fault too. I was so caught up in the stress of being an intern myself, and I took her for granted."

Yuuri wrapped his hands around Victor's cheeks and pressed his forehead against his. He didn't say anything, silence was one of the best gifts Yuuri could offer. He didn't want to tell Victor: it's not your fault, or it's alright.

It wasn't.

"Lukas taught me how to give, and to not only think of myself like I had done all my life," Victor's silver locks mingled with Yuuri's dark hair.

"You are far from that, Victor," Yuuri blushed and avoided his gaze, "I never told you this, but...long before we met, I blurted out during my med school interview that catching up to you was my goal...and that you are everything that I ever aspired to be. I have been following the free clinics projects you started for ages. You of all people are not selfish."

Victor's eyes widened.

Yuuri blushed, then their gaze locked again.

"Remember those essay you had to write to get into med school?" There was laughter in Victor's eyes.

Yuuri nodded and grinned, "yea, those were the hardest one thousand words I had to squeeze out of myself."

"I know, right?" Victor pulled him closer.

"Can you imagine the admissions committee reading through thousands of variations of 'because I want to help people' and 'my family member was sick and Dr. X was so inspiring, I want to be just like her'..." Yuuri shuddered.

"There's also the 'I volunteered and I did medical research, now please take me' variation," Victor echoed his laughter, "that was on mine."

"But yours was genuine," Yuuri's smile lit up the room. Would you have done it again if you could turn back time?"

"Absolutely," Victor answered without hesitation, "would you?"

"Probably...and a definite yes when night float is over," Yuuri leaned back onto Victor's arms and rested his head on his shoulder, "here's the kicker, if Luke tells you he wants to be a doctor, what would you say?"

"Run, there's better things to do, get out while you can?" Victor joked and shook his head and watched Yuuri from up close, "he can be whatever he wanted to be..." he ran his hand through Yuuri's hair with affection then kissed him on top on his head. Makkachin stirred in her asleep at their feet.

Yuuri tilted his head up and turned towards him, he ran one hand over Victor's chest, pausing at his button. He wanted more. Much more. His heart raced. Lukas was fast asleep in his crib in the second bedroom of Victor's apartment. He wondered what if...he was to make a move. He wanted Victor to pick him up and throw him onto his bed, and to feel Victor's hands peeling off his clothes as if he was fighting against time. _I can't...not yet..._ he dropped his hand.

Instead he brushed his lips against Victor's for the briefest moment, like a dragonfly touching down on the calm pristine surface of a pond. Ripples of pleasure ran down his spine.

Before Victor could to speak Yuuri sealed his lips with another kiss, deeper this time but he didn't linger.

Yuuri whispered before the space between them vanished, "I know you need time...I am not asking for anything, but when you are ready...I'll be right here." What he really wanted to say was: _In the beginning I fell for the idea of you, how I imagined you in my mind, but now, it's all of you, including your selfishness, flaws, and your growing insight and your imperfections. But I'll wait...for you to pick up the pieces, for you to learn to love yourself again, for as long as it takes._

 _When you are ready..._

 _I'll be here to meet you where you are._

Yuuri yawned, delirious from the fatigue yet inside of him he was whirling with happiness.

"Want to lie down?" Victor retracted his arm and tapped his own thigh with invitation.

Yuuri made a strange noise and blushed as he rested his head on Victor's lap. Victor leaned forwards and grabbed a book from his the coffee table. Then he leaned down and kissed Yuuri's forehead, "good night."

Sleepiness took over him, he was warm, he leaned against Victor, inhaling his scent, like the fresh pine forest, calm, with a hint of spice.

The last thing he felt was Victor's hands running through his hair softly.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

I am halfway through night float.

Two more weeks and I never have to do this ever again...It's surreal being 10 months away from from slaying this beast called residency.

Looking back, if I could turn back time would I have chosen this all over again?

Yea. I would.

But there were definitely moments in the middle of the night in where I questioned my life choices lol.

-A

P.S. I think JJ is a fantastic character, and I refuse to make him the bad guy.

* * *

 **Chapter 7: Make me remember**

 **Come over.**

That was all Victor's text said.

It was eleven pm on Thursday night.

Yuuri's heart thumped inside his chest as he ran to the bathroom and splashed cold water all over his face.

* * *

Re: Reviews:

AiViCi: Thanks so much! I promised myself not to write angst, but the beginning of this story is pretty dark. Thanks so much for your reviews, I always enjoy hearing from you!

K. Haruyuki: thanks so much for you kind words! Hope you enjoyed this one!

Guest: yep it is! Those two idiots...

MissMJS: I am keeping my promise of writing less angst things. Thanks so much!


	7. Chapter 7: Stethoscope Sign

**Chapter 7: Stethoscope Sign**

"Did you check the database?" Dr. Cialdini crossed his arms, his white coat clean and pressed, the lines on his sleeves crisp.

"Not yet, I didn't have time." Yuuri avoided his program director's eyes.

"Always search the database," Celestino raised one bushy eyebrow.

Yuuri nodded as he shifted in his black dress shoes that still needed some time to be broken into. The database contained records of prescriptions with potential for addiction and abuse and when the patient filled them.

"What about stethoscope sign?"

"What's that?" Yuuri blushed, his shoulders slumped, he couldn't tell if his program director was about to get angry or just messing with him.

Celestino's sharp blue eyes gleamed with amusement.

With his big hairy hand he patted Yuuri on the back and led the way, "I'll show you."

Georgi, Yuuri's current senior resident, snorted and suppressed his silent laughter.

Celestino slowed his pace outside of the patient's open door on purpose.

The patient drank his ginger ale through a straw while watching TV without any sign of distress. He turned his head all of a sudden the team approached, clutched his stomach and doubled over, his face twisting in agony.

Celestino and Georgi exchanged a dead fish-eyed look.

"Good morning, my name is Dr. Cialdini, and this is the team," Celestino approached the bedside where the patient writhed, rocking the bed.

"Please doc, I'm in pain," he clutched his stomach and squeezed a few tears out of the corner of his eyes.

"I can see that," Celestino continues, "the good news is the results of the CT scan the emergency department did of your belly came back without any alarming findings."

The patient continued to roll back and forth the hospital bed, "I need something for pain now. I am allergic to aspirin, acetaminophen, ibuprofen...the only thing that helps is that medication they gave to me in the downstairs...it starts with a D-...Dilau-...something."

"Your CT showed you are very constipated," Celestino remained calm, "which is the most common side effect of taking pain killers such as Dilaudid. Let's work on that, your stomach pain will get better once we get things moving."

"Please, only morphine helps. I won't ask the nurse to page you, I promise, 4 miligrams..." another bead of tear fell from his eyes.

"As I said before, morphine makes the constipation problem worse as well," Celestino pulled the stethoscope off from around his neck, "can I examine your abdomen, so we can come up with a plan?"

The patient nodded. As soon as Celestino's hand made contact with his skin he cried out in pain.

"It hurts here?" Celestino moved his hand to a different spot, hardly even touching the patient's abdomen.

"Ow, it hurts all over," his face twisted, "my pain is 20 out of 10."

"Sorry, I won't push on your belly anymore, I am going to listen instead," the drum of Celestino's stethoscope rested on the upper right quadrant.

The patient held his breath, wincing.

Then suddenly Celestino pushed down with his stethoscope.

Three full seconds passed and the patient realized he had blown his cover, he flipped the switched to full blown wailing a little too late.

Yuuri realized that's what Celestino meant by "positive stethoscope sign".

"Dr. Katsuki will come and see you later." Celestino's blue stethoscope returned to coiling around his neck like a snake, "I hope you feel better, let's try some medication to treat the constipation."

Then the patient started screamed, "Get out, you are all the worst doctors I have ever seen!" He hissed, "You are not treating my pain and I will call the hospital administrators and file a complaint! I am calling patient advocate! My pain is not adequately treated. Get the fuck out!"

Celestino turned around as the troupe of residents and medical students followed him out of the room.

* * *

"Fuck," Yuuri muttered under his breath after scrolling through the database of controlled the substance: five prescribers, seven pharmacies, and over one hundred and fifty tabs of painkillers for the past month. _I should have known._ His insides twisted uncomfortably. _The patient was a drug seeker. It was that obvious. That was a rookie mistake. I don't think those prescribers checked the database either._ He ripped another corner of his sandwich with his teeth almost in a savage manner, kicking himself inside.

"Let me guess, drug seeker?" Victor pulled a chair that creaked with every slight moment and sat on the next computer. His elbow brushed past Yuuri's by accident.

Yuuri didn't move, "Yea," He sighed, he bit his sandwich again then chased it down with more coffee, "I have a family meeting to go to for another patient with terminal cancer about end of life care. I have to review one more time his month long hospital course, yet here I am getting paged every ten minutes from the drug seeker requesting for IV morphine with Benadryl." His groaned.

"It gets better, when you are the senior resident and not carrying the pager anymore," Victor chuckled, his chin rested on his palm. Despite everything that happened in his personal life, Victor's still carried that serene expression.

"Thanks, _only_ seven more months, that's real comforting." _How could he appear so unfazed and not jaded amidst all this? Sometimes I don't feel like a doctor anymore, but a slave, secretary, and social worker and a tiny cog in the somewhat rusty machinery that carried on with or without me._

Yuuri made a sarcastic face.

Victor laughed, his silvery locks quivered, "I am only showing you bright side."

"It's sad you know," Yuuri rolled his shoulders back and stretched his arms. His back cracked from sitting in the same position for too long, "people whose lives becomes consumed by their addiction to opioids, including faking it to try to get more. This patient had no insight that he has an issue with addition."

"As they teach us in med school, the stages of change," Victor leaned back into his chair, "the first step to changing being acknowledging that you have a problem."

Yuuri shook his head, as his pager twitched again. He dialed the nurse's phone number for the fifteenth time, "got it, I'll be right there."

"AMA?" Victor raised an eyebrow, without any hint of suprise.

"Yea," Yuuri deleted the page, without out needing to look down, folded his patient list containing checkboxes and left the chair for the first time in two hours. AMA stood for leaving Against Medical Advice. Yuuri pulled out the AMA form from the drawer for the drug seeking patient to sign.

* * *

Eleven pm on Thursday night, Yuuri showered, washed away the fatigue from another day at the hospital, his towel still covering his hair as a few drops of water trickled down the bridge of his nose. The comfort of his bed inviting, he loved the sense of hope Thursdays brought along.

He looked forward to the weekend, when Victor wanted to meet at Cosmos for coffee, then maybe they would walk along the boardwalk by the beach afterwards. He missed the warmth of Victor's hands interlaced with his own. Not knowing when, the goodbye kisses became a routine. The way Victor leaned on him, the casual affection touches lasted longer.

Yuuri wrapped his arms around himself. He wanted more. Of course he did. But given everything that happened to Victor over the past year, he kept his own desires in reins. He promised Victor to meet him where he was.

Then the Ping from his phone distracted him.

 **Come over.**

That was all Victor's text said.

Heat rushing to his cheeks, and his own pulsating heartbeats in his ears. He ran into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face.

* * *

Still panting a little, he didn't have the patience to wait for the elevator. Before he rang the doorbell, he slowed down because he didn't want to appear desperate. He clutched to the front of his black coat while catching his breaths.

With a click, followed by what seemed like eternity, the lock gave way.

Yuuri took one step forwards.

Victor didn't say anything, he cupped Yuuri's face with his hands and sealed his lips with his own.

He tasted like mint, Yuuri's eyes widened, uncertain for a moment that this was real. His chest was pressed against Victor's. Through Victor's soft grey sweater, Yuuri could feel the vibrations of Victor's thumping heart beneath his palm.

Their kisses deepened, Makkachin curled up with her eyes shut on her cushion next to the TV stand. The door to Lukas' bedroom opened a crack, revealing darkness inside.

Yuuri kissed him back with the same intensity.

Without their lips parting, Victor led him into his bedroom. Yuuri's hand landed on the dresser, knocking over a pile of medical journals as Victor pressed his body against his. Victor laughed as the glossy pages fluttered to the ground — the only mess amidst Victor's impeccable apartment.

Victor's tongue entered his mouth, as he lifted Yuuri up until he sat on top of the dresser.

Victor's breaths accelerate against his cheeks, he whispered during the briefest moment when their lips parted, "I want you."

"I have been waiting," Yuuri bit Victor's bottom lip, "for you to say that." His back pressed against the mirror, he slid his hands under Victor's soft sweater, his touch light. His right hand lifted a corner revealing a sliver of skin, "can I?"

His silver hair mussed, he nodded as he leaned in, his breaths hot against Yuuri's neck as he surrendered.

Yuuri's legs straddled around his hips as slowly he lifted Victor's top over his head landing on the glossy journals in a soft grey rumple. Yuuri ran his hands down Victor's neck, then over his sculpted chest. Victor's nipples tented from the excitement and from Yuuri's touch.

Yuuri completely forgotten about the fatigue from being an intern. _I wish time would stop._

The second button on Yuuri's collared blue shirt came undone under Victor's slender fingers. Then the third and fourth, the fifth one came off and rolled under the darkness beneath the dresser.

Then the door shook, followed by a soft bark, Makkachin woke up, she must have noticed Yuuri's scent and couldn't contain her excitement.

"Sorry Makka," Victor's eyebrows slanted downwards, "we are," Yuuri kissed his cupid's bow, he couldn't control the groan escaping his throat from the sensualness of that moment, "busy -"

Makkachin whined and the sound of her body gliding down against the door followed.

Yuuri chuckled into the nape of Victor's neck, "how much of what we are doing do you think she understands?"

"That's _such_ an romantic thing to say," Victor snorted before throwing his head back, unable to contain his laughter. He wrapped his arms around Yuuri's waist, picked him up and lowered him onto the bed. He peeled Yuuri's dress shirt, now missing a button, from his chest, "hang on."

His dresser drawer opened and closed before he returned. Victor kneeled as he ripped the condom wrapper open with his teeth, "is it okay if I -"

 _Did he really have to ask?_ "Yes-" Yuuri's heart at his throat as Victor fingered at his belt first, then his zipper.

As Victor's warm lips closed in around him, Yuuri's back arched, as he gripped the white sheets with one hand, and with the other he clasped his mouth to muffle the sound beyond his control from escaping, all of his nerve endings lit on fire. A few of Victor hair brushed past Yuuri's inner thigh as Victor moved up and down.

Victor looked up from his long silvery lashes, he sped up, reading Yuuri's every reactions. As soon as Yuuri came close to finishing, he slowed down, drawing out these moments of pleasure.

Time, became irrelevant.

With flushed face, and panting a little, Yuuri propped himself up on his elbows, "Victor," his dark hair fell over his eyes, "can I see you?"

Victor stood up as Yuuri swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He nodded as he tilted Yuuri's chin up for another kiss while tugged at the string at his waist.

Suddenly, with one strong arm, Yuuri lifted him this time and laid him onto his back.

Victor, caught off guard from Yuuri's gesture of boldness, inhaled sharply, "you never fail to surprise me."

Yuuri's full warm weight now on top of him, his bare skin flushed, pressed against him, Victor's control escaped him.

The way Victor looked unraveling from his confident self, unraveling little by little drove Yuuri over the edge. His one hand curled around him, while their lips never parted. His other hand travelled past Victor's waist.

"Have you done this before?" Yuuri's fingers lingered over a certain place making his intentions explicit.

Victor blushed, his glance sideways, "maybe only a few times back in college."

 _Uncertainty looked good on him,_ Yuuri couldn't rip his eyes away from Victor's flushed cheeks and his trembling lips.

"Yuuri, I want you to -" before Victor finished his sentence. Yuuri stroked the side of his face.

"Let's go slow," Yuuri kissed the tip of his nose.

"Okay," Victor flashed him a shy smile meant for him alone, "I trust you."

Yuuri nodded. His hand closed around the small blue tube next to them and squeezed its contents onto his fingers, "you sure you want this?"

"Yea," Victor wrapped wrapped his arms around Yuuri and straddled Yuuri's hips with his legs, he nestled his face into the groove of Yuuri's neck.

Slowly Yuuri slid one finger in as Victor squeezed his eyes shut. He dug his heel into Yuuri's calf, his breaths interrupted. Yuuri adjusted the speed as he observed Victor's reaction from within his arms.

Victor's body shuddered with pleasure as he clawed at Yuuri's back, "more." Victor's voice muffled, his breaths hot against Yuuri's cheeks.

Yuuri slid in another finger, moving slow at first. Yuuri's other hand closed around Victor once more. The spring of the bed undulated underneath them, "that's far enough, we'll continue from here next time." Yuuri kissed his cheek, "I don't want to hurt you, especially for our first time."

Victor didn't protest, instead pleasure rippled through his body.

Then he left warm ribbons between them as the rest of the world faded, became irrelevant, as if they were the only ones in the entire universe.

Yuuri let go shortly thereafter.

Victor looked up at him and smiled. His smile used to be fake and pasted onto his face. But now, that smile contained a hint of shyness, meant for Yuuri alone.

Waiting for his breaths to return to evenness, Yuuri glanced at the clock on the wall. One thirty a.m., which meant, three and half hours of sleep before another day as an intern begun. Yuuri flipped over onto his back and and curled up next to Victor.

"I know you are tired, and yes, I know it was selfish of me," Victor ran his fingers through Yuuri's hair.

"Shh, selfish yes," Yuuri teased him, "I'm glad you have insight, the first step to change is to acknowledge that you have a problem."

"Hey!"

Yuuri let out a care free laugh, "but it's my favorite kind of selfish." His index finger tapped the tip of Victor's nose.

Victor made a face.

They laid tangled in each other, not wanting to let go. As much as they loved Thursdays, they both needed to see patients in a few hours.

Then Yuuri sighed, "you are going to have to lend me a shirt for walking back," he didn't have the energy to search for his missing button or to fix it. He sat up and tied a knot on the condom.

Right before Yuuri stood up, Victor grabbed his wrist, "stay."

Yuuri's heart fluttered, happiness buzzing and whirling through his veins.

"I'll lend you a toothbrush _and_ a shirt," Victor flashed a mischievous smile.

* * *

Victor woke up on his own at the crack of dawn by reflex, cursing residency fucking with his biological clock in silence. The side of bed Yuuri slept on still warm. He rubbed his eyes, Yuuri's scent lingered, he buried his face into Yuuri's pillow.

The aroma of real breakfast wafted from the kitchen as he opened the door.

"Good morning," Yuuri flicked his wrist and flipped the omelette without needing a spatula.

"Yuuri, you didn't have to," Victor couldn't wipe the grin on his face. He ate cereal and occasion an energy bar on his way out in the morning. But most of the time, breakfast meant black coffee.

"You know how it is, it's impossible to sleep in as a resident, even if I try."

"I know, right?" Victor wrapped one arm around his shoulder and the other encircled his waist from behind him, he caught himself blushing, "hey Yuuri."

Yuuri turned off the stove.

"I was wondering," Victor kissed his neck, and buried his face into Yuuri's shoulders.

"Yes?"

"Will you be my boyfriend?"

* * *

 _ **That's NOT your shirt you are wearing...**_

Phichit's text suspicious.

 _ **Nope, it's not.**_

Yuuri texted his best friend back, grinning like an idiot but he didn't care.

 ** _It's my boyfriend's._**

He typed that, then deleted it.

 _Phichit, you little shit._ He decided to torture his best friend who loved gossip more than anything for a little longer. _He must be dying right now seeing that I am typing but he's getting nothing._

 ** _Yuuri?! You have a lot of explaining to do._**

 ** _Getting paged, ttyl_**

Yuuri emptied his second cup of coffee and returned to typing his progress notes.

He caught himself unable to control his smile.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

It's been a while!

I haven't forgotten about this story. This story will end next year in June, as I am portraying Yuuri at different points of his intern year in real time. He is about 5 months in at this point.

The background behind this chapter:

Prescription opioid (painkiller) abuse is an epidemic & tens of thousands of people overdose and die each year. There is a push for weaning off the controlled potentially addictive medications & finding alternative managements for chronic pain...However, it's not always easy explaining that to patients, rationalizing to them the harms of the medications that previously kept their pain at bay outweighing the benefits.

Everything here is fictional of course, so please don't take it too seriously. I wanted to share the underbelly & the darker, grittier side of the medical world. The intention is not making fun of patients.

I hope you enjoyed the dynamic between those two!

-A

* * *

re: reviews:

KisunaFuji: thanks's so much for your kind words, I hope you enjoy this one too.

MissMJS: it's been a while! Hope you'll read this one! I wanted to focus on finishing Demon Song, so this story is in the background for a while. I am working on another fantasy AU set in the same universe as DS, but in a different lifetime, where Otabek and Yuri are the main characters. The summary, I have to say, took more time to write than the first chapter lol.


	8. Chapter 8: Unbroken

**Chapter 8: Unbroken**

"So then I told the fellow to his face _'it's your job to see the patient and do the consults, you lazy piece of shit,'_ " Yuuri crossed his arm in front of his bare chest as water rolled from his skin and dripped into the bathtub.

"You did not say the last part out loud," Victor chuckled from sitting on the opposite side, "knowing you, even when you are raging, you still sound polite."

Yuuri picked up Luke's rubber spaceship that floated between them in the bubbles and narrowed his eyes and grumbled, "and you sound just like Phichit."

Victor laughed.

"What?" Yuuri threw the ship at him.

"You angry," Victor caught it in midair before it hit his shoulder.

The corner of Yuuri's lips curled up, "you know, residency is turning me into a horrible person."

Victor edged closer and propped his chin up on the edge of the bathtub, "How so?"

"Six months ago, before I first started, I rarely swore, or think mean thoughts," Yuuri picked up Victor's other hand and traced the lines on his palm, "but now, I can hardly recognize myself." He sighed, half amused, half concerned, "in the afternoon, the same nasty cardiology fellow got chewed up by his attending for being lazy. I was the fly on the wall on a computer nearby, and I _enjoyed_ it." A genuinely disturbed expression hung on his face.

"That's it?" Victor tapped him on the tip of his nose, "you are making me look like monster in comparison."

"Really?" Yuuri reached for the rubber spaceship again with colorful aliens in the windows, "explain how you are a monster?"

"Residency can turn the best of us into assholes. It's the nature of the beast. We pretend to be happy, we pretend to get along with the colleagues who are constantly intentionally trying to fuck us over," Victor leaned closer, "the trick is faking it."

"You are pretty darn good then," Yuuri rested the side of his chin on the Victor's hand at the edge of the tub.

"Yeah I am," Victor snorted, "whenever certain attendings with overly inflated egos go on a rant about themselves and how much worse their residency was in the olden day's and seeing forty patients every morning. I do this thing where I lean in, nod and smile and insert a few words like 'neat', 'is that right?', 'fascinating'. The truth is truth, I don't give two shits about what they are talking about. I think about lunch. I think about you. I think about all the BS I don't have to put up with anymore when I am no longer a resident, like the ancillary staff who walks all over us because we are residents."

"Glad I am helpful in those moments," Yuuri grinned, "they think we have it easy, I bet the older doctors didn't have this much documentation or the lawyers breathing down their necks."

"I don't think it's fair they criticize us for complaining and seeing 'far fewer' patients than they did and working less hours. They should try holding the pager one day and experience the bullshit we have to deal with," Victor raised his eyebrows, "imagine Baranovskaya being handed a stack of discharge summaries to fax."

"Right?" Yuuri chuckled.

* * *

"How do I look," Victor fastened the last button on his light blue dress shirt. He wore Yuuri's colours today.

"Stunning," Yuuri reached for his darker blue tie with fine silvery dots studded like stars and begun to fasten it.

Victor's grin widened as he ran his fingers through his hair parted to one side. When he first moved to this city, he bought six of the same white dress shirt and two thin black ties because he couldn't care less.

Little by little, before he knew it, colours returned to his life.

"All done," Yuuri patted him on the chest, "I am jealous, you are going on job interviews while I have two and half years of this - "

Victor sealed his lips with his, then Yuuri lost his train of thoughts.

Yuuri couldn't stop staring at the beautiful man before him, in a perfectly tailored navy suit close to black, "of course the outpatient clinic would hire you." He patted Victor's tie one more time, "you spent years establishing free clinics." _He could also have been employed to sell that suit,_ Yuuri added in his mind in silence.

"Cheers to to never working inside a hospital again," Victor winked.

* * *

Years later at a holiday gathering, someone asked Yuuri, "how did you know he was the one?"

He closed his eyes and always came back to the memory of this particular dark morning.

He worked non-stop for the past eleven days. He couldn't even look at any social media because of the happy pictures posted on his family. He never wanted to go home more than right now. When the rest of the world pauses, and returned to their loved ones, medicine carried on. With skeletal staff, especially around this time of the year. The hospital never slept. The breathing machines and IV antibiotics kept on going.

The uglier side of humanity seeped through like a festering wound during the holidays.

Yuuri sighed as he dialed his disabled elderly patient's son's phone number the fifth time.

 _"I'm sorry, the number you have reached has a mail box that is currently full, please try your call again later."_

He realized like a punch in the gut: family members sometimes dropped off off their disabled relative at the hospital for the holidays. Perhaps their lives providing care for their loved ones became so overwhelming that they only wished for a break and time for themselves. Perhaps they felt guilty. Yuuri, tried with his last remaining parts of empathy to relate to them and to calm himself down. He tried his hardest not to judge.

Yuuri settled at his usual spot in the hospital. An isolated computer next to the window with a phone in the far corner of the fifteenth floor. This ward opened one month ago because of the hospital's recent expansion. Usual the rooms at this end of the hall remained empty. People don't come to the hospital close to holiday time. Usually the emergency department became jam packed after holidays because when time to work begun, all of a sudden people remembered their chest pain or shortness of breaths.

He sipped life back into himself as he emptied his second cup of coffee. He took off his glasses to clean the fingerprints off from the lens with the corner of his white coat. He logged into the EMR to start viewing the notes from the night before. Then he froze.

 _I can't believe how some horrible people end up working in medicine,_ he scrolled through the note the overnight intern wrote about his patient. He clenched his teeth when he read the sentence _"the day team Dr. Katsuki did not order an EKG on admission, despite patient's troponin being elevated."_ Troponin is the blood test that showed the heart muscles under stress and became elevated during a heart attack. He clicked back at his admission note and the exact place where he documented his EKG findings. _Why would I not order an EKG on a patient with every risk factor for a heart attack under the sun?_

He knew that overnight intern carried the reputation of not being a team player, of deliberately throwing others under the bus to make himself feel superior somehow. He wondered why someone like that would enter the medical profession. He recalled Phichit rounding with that resident and he would feed the elderly patient with dementia in front of the attending. As soon as the attending left he left the spoon in the tray without even telling the nurse that the patient needed assistance. Yuuri cursed inside his head with every conceivable bad word.

Outside the sky stayed pitch black over the sleeping city at 5:30 am, a few wisps of clouds shrouded over the thin crescent moon.

His pager twitched as now he clipped it next to himself on silent. Yuuri returned it and the phone almost slipped from his hand. Mr. Leonard, the patient he took care of for the past three weeks, passed away in the middle of this frigid night. They needed him to pronounce him and do the paperwork.

His fist closed tight around the two packets of brown sugar inside his white-coat until the granules slipped through his fingers and his nails dug into his palms making crescent imprints.

When Yuuri first met Mr. Leonard he made jokes about dancing with the ladies once he left the hospital. He didn't think much of his shortness of breath, attributing it to "just a cold". He turned ninety about a week ago.

Yuuri broke the news to him, metastatic lung cancer that clogged part of his airways causing pneumonia. The entire right half of his lungs turned completely white on his X-ray.

Yuuri watched him deteriorate over the past three weeks. His breathing more labored, his face pale. His children lived on the other side of the coast. He recounted to Yuuri how he met his wife at the University where she had been a professor and he, a mechanic, as he lifted his coffee cup with his wrinkly hands painted purple and blue from the blood draws, "let an old dying man have his sugar, alright?"

Diabetic diets excluded real sugar.

Day after day, they established their routine. Yuuri brought him two packets from the cafeteria every morning. His patient hardly met the criteria to be called diabetic anyways, and his attending didn't mind.

Yuuri marvelled at how much joy brown sugar brought to the old man.

His breathing became increasingly difficult over the next two weeks. He wore the BiPAP mask to sleep now because his oxygenation dropped at night.

He muttered thanks the day before as he ripped off the chunky mask that delivered extra push of oxygen into his lungs. Yuuri helped fit the plastic tubes of the nasal cannula delivering 6L of oxygen in place of the rhythmic machine. Mr. Leonard ripped the two package of brown sugar and together they watched the granules disappear into his coffee, the Elixir of life for the residents. He told Yuuri that he lived a good and long life and he didn't want to suffer anymore, "just keep me alive long enough for my daughter to get here to pull the plugs, will you?"

Yuuri didn't know how to respond.

Mr. Leonard had his good days, where he sipped his coffee being propped up by his pillow and told Yuuri animated stories. On his bad days, his frail hands curled around side of the off-white hospital bed asking Yuuri, "doc, am I going to die?"

Yuuri again, couldn't answer, after all, who was he to know how long his patient had left. In medicine, nothing is one hundred percent.

His daughter arrived on Christmas Day. She never left his bedside.

Yuuri never saw the same kind of dedication before.

Mr. Leonard grew weaker, until his daughter ripped the packets of sugar Yuuri brought and stirred his coffee. Somehow he had a feeling that it was time to say goodbye. He scribbled his signature that grew more and more recognizable through residency and checked off the box next to "DNR/DNI", which stood for Do Not Resucitate and Do Not Intubate. He then checked the next box with the black bolded letters "comfort measures only". Yuuri no longer remembered the days of the week from his long stretch, but Mr. Leonard squeezed his hand and thanked him for the sugar before he left work and he had a feeling that was the last time. With his daughter at bedside, he was ready.

They started the morphine drip overnight, not to hasten death, but to take away pain.

Yuuri hung up the phone and covered his eyes with his forearm and the back of his hands as a single tear trickled down his cheek. He cursed himself inside, _how embarrassing. I swore I would not cry inside the hospital._ He couldn't help but think about the patients who died alone at night, and didn't have any family at bedside. He couldn't help but think of how fragile fleeting life was. He thought of his own family, and how long it was since he had last gone home. _What if there was an accident? What if one day all of a sudden I lost my entire family? I am overreacting._ He chased those thoughts away.

Then suddenly the soft shade of green on his pager from his his hot blurry vision caught his eyes. _A text page?_

 **I believe in you.**

 _Victor._

 _How did you know that I need you right now?_

Yuuri clenched the fabric before his chest, as warmth spread through his entire body, as if waking him from a terrible dream.

He never realized until now how much stronger he became since the beginning of residency. He never realized his own capacity for both hatred, like for that piece of shit night float intern, and for love: for his patients, for the nurse who stayed extra ten minutes to feed a patient, for Victor, who raised him up in his darkest moments for believing that he was unbroken.

He wiped his tears away and dusted the sugar granules from his palms and kept on going.

* * *

That night he didn't speak as Victor let him in. Lukas' door opened to a slit revealing only darkness inside. Yuuri dropped his coat and bag onto the ground and buried his face into Victor's neck inhaling his familiar scent.

"How did you know-" _that I needed you, at those exact moments._ Yuuri whispered as Victor pressed his forehead against his, and their fingers intertwined.

"I just do," Victor smiled.

Yuuri led him into the bedroom.

"Yuuri, you must be tired, are you sure tonight you want to -"

Yuuri shut the door behind them and nodded.

Victor's blue-green eyes glistened as he glanced at him through his silvery lashes. He took off Yuuri's glasses and reached for his buttons.

Then they forgot everything else.

The smell of the hospital, the stale apple and the bland cafeteria coffee, the infuriating elevator ride that stopped at every single damn floor. The beeping of the infusion pump after a bag of normal saline finished that Yuuri still couldn't figure out how to silence for good. The way the pager vibrated, the way the nurses' phones rang, the texture of the blue isolation gowns. Yuuri learnt to disconnect from it all, as if closing the pages of a book.

Instead, they lived only in the present moment: of sweaty palms, flesh on flesh, accelerating heartbeats, and kissed that lingered and left marks on each other's skin.

Victor bit into the white sheets as they became as close as two people could ever be.

Yuuri let go of his fatigue, humiliation of being a resident, and the micro trauma grinding him away every time he witness death with such intimacy, interacted with colleagues who only cared about looking good in front of attendings and not about patients, and each time he thought of home.

He buried his face into Victor's chest after their breathing started to slow down. He blinked away the hot tears whirling in his eyes, Victor wiped them away and kissed the place where a single drop left a salty trail, "I know you haven't been home for a while," Victor begun, "I know it's been a long stretch."

"Victor," their eyes met for the briefest moment, Yuuri reached up to trace the outline of his face, "when I'm with you, it feels like home."

Victor's heart accelerated next to his flushed cheek, "I love you." He kissed the top of Yuuri's head.

Hot drops won't stop pouring out of Yuuri's eyes onto Victor's chest, "sorry, I don't know what to do when people cry in front of me. Well, I do when they are my patients, but -"

"Shut up, stupid, you are ruining moment," Yuuri sniffled, "I love you too."

* * *

Nikolai Plisetsky closed Cosmos early for New Year's day. He invited guests over for New Year's Eve, including the residents who couldn't go home. He also wanted to celebrate Mila's novel being accepted for publication.

Even though they didn't celebrate Christmas, Yuri insisted on putting up a white tree decorated with cats, aliens, galaxies and spaceships inside glass orbs. Yuuri raised an eye brow as he first walked in. Tiny golden lights encircled the tree like stars. _I am still convinced that Yuri is not from this world,_ he amused himself.

Meanwhile Yuri narrowed his eyes and hissed, "What?"

Yuuri grinned while avoiding his gaze, "nothing." Instead of having a conversation, Yuri's cat arrived for the rescue. He purred in Yuuri's arms happily, tickling his face with his fluffy tail dipped in grey.

Despite being socially awkward, the feisty eighteen year old with an uncanny talent for creating music, and fiercely protective of Victor, grew on him.

Yuri and Otabek now played music regularly every Thursday evenings now. Otabek on the violin, and Yuri on the ancient piano at the back of the cafe. They attracted a regular crowd, and Yuri made more tip than ever.

Yuuri settles on a chair by the window, propped his chin into his palms and watched the snowflakes fall like one million feathers dusting the roofs with a new white coat.

The crisp bell at the door of the cafe rang as everyone turned their heads toward Mila, whose bellflower eyes lit up when everyone hugged her with congratulations for becoming a published author.

Her face still flushed from the cold, she hung her long violet coat with faux fur at the collar and her scarf with van Gogh's starry night print on the stand. She picked up Lukas and lifted him into the air.

Lukas giggled with delight.

Victor hired her to babysit for him during the day. Time and time again, Mila insisted on staying later so Victor and Yuuri could spend sometimes outside on their own. Victor stood up to hug her, "Congratulations, you deserve every bit of it!"

Mila blushed from all of the sets of eyes and grins focusing on her, "I have Lukas to thank," She patted the toddler on top of his head. She couldn't recall the hours that she spent writing with Lukas in her lap.

"I request an autographed version of your book," Nicolai smiled through his thick bushy salt and pepper eyebrows.

"Absolutely!" Sat next to Yuuri, with Lukas still in her arms.

"I always knew you had it in you," Victor faced Mila as he sipped his coffee from a wide mouthed cup decorated with swirling galaxies. The aroma of bakeries, pirozhki, and laughter filled the air.

Yuuri zoned out for a moment, still recovering from the fatigue of working for days in a row, he watched the man in front of him, with his son standing in Mila's lap who looked nothing like him, his laugher carefree, like night and day from when they first met. The man who took three antidepressants, who wore the hollow smile disappeared. Victor still stayed on one, sometimes he joked about taking it for the people around him.

Otabek and Yuri begun their jam as the crowd whistled and cheered.

Yuuri wiped his eyes then smiled.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

Thanks for reading this chapter! Writing it was therapeutic for me at this time of the year. I haven't spent the holidays with my family for 3 years now, this year without exception. Burn out is very real in medical world, and especially in residency. Part of this chapter describes it.

The decision Victor made with his career parallels what I ultimately decided to do with my own. Primary care (or family physician or GP, depending on where you are from) is not the most "glorious" of specialties, we get paid less than specialists, there is a high rate of burn out, the mountains of paperwork. But Medicine is diverse enough that every kind of personality can find their place. Primary care is where I found mine.

By the way, I got the job I wanted for a long time.

6 more months to go then I am no longer a resident.

Seeing light.

xoxo

-A

P.S. On Tumblr if you want to chat, user name: antarespromise

* * *

re: reviews:

canjitachi: thanks so much! Of all of my stories, this one is the closest one to me.

JustAbitch: thank you for your kind words!

MissMJS: it's been a while again, I was working for a long time over the holidays, finally off and still recovering. Thanks for reading and for your support as always!


	9. Chapter 9: Stronger

**Chapter 9: Stronger**

Victor flashed a half smile as he passed by Yuuri frantically finishing his notes at the nursing station.

 _Something is going on_ , Yuuri downed the rest of the cafeteria coffee. He knew Victor well enough to read his expressions. _Maybe it's because he is seeing his psychiatrist today._ They didn't tell any of their colleagues that they were together, nor tried to hide it when they were outside of the hospital. Within the workplace, they kept their professional distance. Yuuri couldn't stand the medical dramas where doctors hook up with each other in the call rooms. In reality he didn't want to imagine the kinds of bugs brewing inside the call rooms and the _C. diff_ spores on the ground. He nodded at Victor, pressing his lips together.

Recently amidst the residency rumour mill, words that they were close circulated. Yuuri didn't care. The one thing he loved the most about being a grown up is the older he became the less of a shit he gave about gossip and the opinions of others. With the final click of his mouse, he signed the final note and suppressed the uneasiness from Victor's expression earlier and focused back to work. Frowning a little he scrolled through the vitals of the last patient. _The heart rate and respiratory rate are trending up_ , he noted, _after the patient received contrast._

The his pager, clipped to his chest, vibrated. He no longer could stand the beeping, instead he attached it close to his heart. He dialed the five digit phone number of the nurse for the patient he had been worried about all morning.

"Call a rapid," Yuuri hung up the phone, "I am on my way." His heart raced a little adrenaline rushed through his veins sharpening all of his senses. He threw the still warm empty coffee cup into the trash next to him and stood up. A strange new sense of calm washed over him. He no longer needed to glance at the patient list inside his pocket to recall this patient's hospital course. He took a deep breath and tightened his fist inside his pocket. _I got this._

Residency taught him to put on a mask of calm, even though inside him resembled a raging thunderstorm. _Fake it until you make it Yuuri,_ he remembered Victor's words. If he didn't remain calm, the rest of the team would fall apart with him.

He entered the patient's room, the nurses gathered outside.

Sara, the new nurse with large violet eyes turned around and let out a sign of relief at the sight of Yuuri's arrival. From the outside other nurses from the floor are gathering, one pushing the red crash cart next to the patient's bedside.

The patient could no longer utter any words, the muscles at his neck clenching with each rise and fall of his chest. His lips puffy and his face flushed. A short bursting stridor accompanied every breath.

 _Stridor, lip swelling, recent contrast exposure in a patient who never had a CT before,_ Yuuri put the pieces together, "He is having an allergic reaction, let's convert the rapid to a code, page anesthesiology." His voice even as ice of a frozen lake, let's give the epi, get IV solumedrol and Benadryl ready, and stat labs including ABG."

"Got it," Sara pulled the handle of the crash cart open. The room silent, other the sound of opening of IV kits and shuffling feet of the nurses to carry out his instructions.

Every second seemed like an eternity. The rest of the team poured in one after another, including the ICU team.

Yuuri begun to present the patient to the tall ICU fellow with the fearless grey eyes, "Patient is a 57 year old male..."

The fellow asked a few further questions, including the patient's electrolytes from the morning, which Yuuri knew by heart. He nodded as he begun to prepare the patient for intubation, "you did everything right," he tilted the patient's chin back with one hand and with the other reached for the laryngoscope.

"Thanks," blood rushed to Yuuri's face as he at last exhaled as the patient's airway became protected by the tube and the respiratory therapist started the ventilator rhythmically puffing air into the patient lungs to help him breathe. He could hear his own heart pounding in his ears. Of course he was scared, but he never let it it show.

After the patient, trailed by several nurses pushing the ventilator and his bed and wheeling him towards the ICU, Yuuri walked down to the end of the hall by the window. He rubbed his face with hands as he wiped away the perspiration from his forehead. His palms cool and clammy, he rubbed them on his white coat. _Victor,_ he closed his eyes and remembered that time when Victor stood by his side while he couldn't think or breathe when the patient was unresponsive on his first days as a doctor, thank you for believing in me, _and for showing me the strength that I never knew I had._

* * *

"Hi Yuuko," Victor settled down onto the single soft chair with rounded edge next to her desk, the small pink carpet soft beneath his feet. He knew his psychiatrist preferred him to use her first name, 'we are both doctors, she would say'.

She decorated her office with soft soothing pastel colors, "you look well," she face lit up, "your program director excused you for this afternoon?"

Victor nodded, "yea, thanks."

She glanced at her computer at his vitals and double clicked with her mouse, "you know, on one hand, I want to finish my notes, but on the other, I sometimes just want to remove the computer and talk to my patients. I can't go home until I finish my charts," she glanced at the frames on her desk at the photos of her twins giggling while sitting inside a giant teacup on a carousel.

He interlaced his fingers and leaned forwards, "I know what you mean, when I did my clinic elective, with fifteen minutes per patient visit, I had to learn to type without looking down at the screen."

Yuuko snapped her laptop shut, "that's it, I am going to indulge myself then, just for today."

Victor smiled.

"So, how are you?" Yuuko's dark brown eyes met his.

"Well, I am in a better place now," He released his own interlaced fingers.

"And Luke?" Yuuko rested her chin on her palm.

"He's great, I couldn't ask for more, he runs around now and it's amazing how fast he pick up words," his smile reached his eyes when he spoke of his son, anticipating exactly where his psychiatrist was going next.

"Yuuri?"

"He is hanging on there. You know how intern year is. Going from a medical student to carrying the pager and running family meetings. I think he is finding his voice as a doctor. I am proud of him," Victor ran his fingers through his hair, "even in middle of all this intern madness, he manages to care for Phichit when he broke his arm, and for Luke and I." He sighed, "through him, I have come to realize how selfish I had been."

He paused, his eyes distant, "I used to blame everything on my ex-wife, for cheating on me, for disappearing from Lucas' life and for how easy she gave up on him, on _us_." Victor's gaze transfixed onto the ground, "Then, Yuuri made me realized all I had ever cared about was my own career," his knuckles white from his closed fist, "I didn't support her enough. She was an intern when she was pregnant with our son, and I can't believe I didn't see it until now."

Yuuko granted him the gift of silence. Sometimes less was more.

"I never told Lina that 'I'm sorry'," He hadn't spoken her name out loud after a long time. His grip loosened his leaned back into the soft back of the beige chair as if all of the weight he bore on his shoulders left him little by little, "Yuuri knew all this about me, yet he accepted me for who I am."

Yuuko nodded.

A small smile hung from Victor's lips, "Yuuko, you saw me at my worst, remember that time I was placed on academic probation?"

"I do, I was worried about you then," Yuuko sipped from her pastel orange mug with a French bulldog on it, "you minimize things, and you are good at putting up the face as if everything is alright."

"It's a funny thing, being through medical school and all that, excelling at things for most of my life, and all of a sudden, being thrown in the middle of a bunch of other smart people, some brilliant, and to come to realization that 'I am mediocre at best'." Victor chuckled and stretched his arms, "when I first moved here for residency, I had to find an apartment, arrange for a babysitter for look after Luke, figure out how to feed him, and how to feed myself. That was when three antidepressants weren't working anymore and I came to the conclusion that I need to talk to someone. I couldn't even look at my own son because he looked nothing like me and everything like his mother."

"I remember that," Yuuko leaned forwards, her chair that matched Victor's made a creaking sound.

"Then the program director called me into the office and told me that he expected more from me and that my work performance was subpar and requires remediation during all that," Victor reminisced, "I had always been good at what I do, and that was the first time in my life I was placed on academic probation."

"And you bottle everything inside," Yuuko reflected, "if I didn't read people for a living I wouldn't have noticed when you first came to see me."

"I know, Yuuri told me that when we first met, he could see right through my fake smile." His blue-green eyes lit up with life every time Yuuri's name escaped his lips.

"I am happy for you Victor, from one doctor to another." Yuuko's smile lit up the room.

* * *

They finished dinner that Yuuri made.

Victor didn't say much during dinner. The muscles on his angular face tenser than before.

 _Maybe he was tired,_ Yuuri's stomach twisted in a knot as he put away the dishes, _maybe,_ he pushed those thoughts away, _maybe he is thinking about his past and his ex-wife after the appointment with his psychitrist._ His heart flip flopped. _I should just ask him._ He shut the cabinet as he tucked away the last bowl.

But Victor begun first. "Yuuri, I wanted to give you something," Victor averted his eyes and blushed, "only if you don't mind. And feel free to say no, or if this is too much, I won't be offended."

Yuuri's heard his own heart race and blood pulsating inside his ears.

Victor pulled his hand out of his pocket revealing an extra set of keys to his apartment. Attached to it, a chain with a brown poodle bearing resemblance to Makkachin glistened.

Yuuri stepped forwards and accepted it with both of his hands, and laughed, "silly Victor, you really think I would say no and tell you that you are too much?"

Victor exhaled as he grinned and touched the back of his neck, "Well, not really, I mean-."

"And all along I thought I was the insecure one," Yuuri pulled him close, "I was wondering why you were acting weird all day."

"When it comes to you, I -," Victor's blush deepened and didn't finish as Yuuri sealed his lips with a deep kiss. Victor had forgotten what he was going to say.

It didn't matter.

* * *

That night Victor tucked Luke in bed after Yuuri read a story from a book he bought for him.

Fatigue caught up with both of them from a long day of work at the hospital.

Victor put down his phone, connected by the red cord to the wall onto the table as Yuuri lifted the covers and joined him.

Yuuri stole the most comfortable T-shirt Victor owned to sleep in, despite the holes.

Victor stretched out one arm across the bed as a gesture for Yuuri to join him, his silvery hair spilling over his eyes. Yuuri nestled his head onto his shoulder. His scent soft and fresh, "pajama thief," Victor teased him as he slid one hand under his own shirt and traced his fingers along the curve of Yuuri's spine.

"I made _edible_ dinner tonight, so that's the least you could do to thank me," Yuuri smirked as he emphasized the word 'edible'.

"Hey! my food wasn't that bad, it's not that hard, cooking, theoretically anyways. I mean it comes down to following instructions and throwing things together. I was pretty decent at general chemistry in college," his hand slid lower along Yuuri's back, organic chemistry on the other hand, is a different story."

"Uh huh," Yuuri buried his face into Victor's bare chest shuddered in silent laughter, "keep on telling yourself that."

Victor gasped and dug his knuckle lightly into the middle of Yuuri's chest.

Yuuri squirmed, "I can't believe you just sternal rubbed me, Victor Nikiforov, you are a terrible, heartless person." He caught Victor's wrist. Doctors did that to patients who weren't rousable to see if they would respond to pain (or to those drug seekers who faked seizure for medications that made them high as a kite).

Victor bursted out in laughter, "you deserved it," he lifted the corner of Yuuri's navy blue shirt, "now I want my shirt back."

"No," Yuuri propped himself up with his elbow then flipped on top of Victor, his knees on either side of Victor's flank.

"Yes," Victor tugged on the soft navy fabric in front of Yuuri's chest until he fell forwards and the tips of their noses almost touched.

"Victor, _just_ how old are you?" Yuuri mocked him.

Their gaze met, the mattress shook from their silent laughter while wresting each other. Yuuri buried his face into Victor's neck.

"How was your appointment today with Yuuko?" Yuuri rolled to his side and rested his cheek on the back of Victor's hand sharing his pillow.

"It was good," Victor edged closer to him on their shared pillow, "I am happy with the current antidepressant, going to stay on it for a few more months then maybe next time we'll taper it." He caressed the side of Yuuri's cheek with his other hand, "Yuuko keeps on telling me to forget that I am a doctor and let her do her job."

"I'm glad," Yuuri's lips brushed past the back of his hand, "I'm proud of you for taking care of yourself. I feel like being doctors we think we know everything, and we are literally the worst patients. We don't know our own limits and we rarely call out sick."

"I know, I have never missed a day of work for the past three years," Victor murmured in agreement."The flow of patients never stop, and the hospital never sleeps. If we get a nasty cold, we put on a mask and keep on going."

"But I'm glad you are taking care of yourself, and I am proud of you," Yuuri's voice ended on a soft note.

"Meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me, Yuuri, I mean it," Victor draped his left arm around Yuuri's waist.

"Likewise," Yuuri's deep warm gaze met his, as if piercing through his bare naked soul, flaws and all. Yuuri met him where he was, "fine, because I couldn't say no to a face like yours, you can have the shirt back." He pulled it over his head.

"I want you without it tonight," Victor dropped it onto the ground.

"Good night," Yuuri kissed him, his lips soft and tasted like mint.

"Good night." With their bare skin pressed together, Victor drifted to sleep.

Yuuri waited.

Victor's breaths became even and deep. His eyes darted back and forth beneath the long silver lashes.

Yuuri gingerly edged away from Victor and pushed open the bathroom door. He returned with a piece of floss and a pen from Victor's drawer. He loved to watch Victor sleep, his face peaceful, almost child like.

Yuuri kneeled onto the bed and wrapped the floss around Victor's ring finger. Victor stirred as Yuuri froze because he didn't want Victor to find out yet. I don't want him to feel pressured to do anything. His heart almost leapt out of his chest.

Then Victor made a strange noise and Yuuri couldn't help but almost snorting into silent laughter. _Stop moving, silly._ He commanded silently in his head. With trembling fingers, Yuuri drew a black marked on the floss. _Mission accomplished_ , he exhaled with relief as he tucked the floss into his pocket.

He drifted to sleep on Victor's pillow.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

There is a high rate of depression amidst medical students, residents alike. With this chapter, I wanted to take away the stigma of seeking help especially amongst our profession. Depression is not a weakness, it's not being apathetic. It isn't something that can be "snapped" out of. It's hidden amongst us, often without traces. Residency sometimes can bring out the best and worst sides of us.

I wanted to say with this chapter: it's okay to seek help and that you are not alone.

Thank you for reading, if you enjoyed this story please let me know!

xoxo

Antares


	10. Chapter 10: A New Chapter

"You look like you are hiding something," Phichit passed Yuuri a cup of coffee.

"No I'm not," Yuuri knew his best friend could read him like an open book.

"Spit it out," Phichit followed him through the hallway at nine am. The busiest part of their morning now finished as they complete all of the notes and rounded on every patient.

"Fine," Yuuri snapped the small black piece of plastic on the coffee lid and sipped the elixir of life, "I bought a ring."

Phichit almost dropped his cup, his eyes widened, his face lit the sterile white hallway, "Yuuri, that's great news! I am so happy for you. How are you going to ask him? And when?"

Yuuri grinned, "that's none of your business." _Torturing you like this is my favorite,_ he smirked. _You are the most notorious contributor of the hospital rumor mill, you deserved it Phichit,_ "and thanks."

"You are the worst," Phichit shook his head, still glowing, "but seriously, I am so happy for you."

They approached the nursing station to meet the attending, Celestino, who loved to tell stories about his days as a resident. Today was no exception.

Some attendings loved the attention of having a circle of residents listening and laughing at their jokes that may or may not be funny, but Yuuri genuinely enjoyed Celestino's stories.

"Remember, never burn your bridges or abuse your interns," Celestino began after greeting the team, "when I was an intern, one of my seniors threw every one of us under the bus so he can look good, like he couldn't help himself. Our program on the other hand loves him. The director called him 'committed to the improvement of others', 'assertive', and 'candid'. Every single resident loathed the program darling. He made me work on hundreds of slides for a presentation and took all of the credit," he cringed.

"But what goes around comes around, because you see, a few years after graduation, I had a job with administrative duties and part of that involved creating schedules for the fellows. The same guy that tortured me intentionally throughout residency showed up as a brand new fellow on July first," he couldn't suppress his laughter, "he looked like he saw a ghost. Because the intern he tortured turned out to be his boss. My job was to approve his vacations."

"Then what happened?" Phichit chimed in.

 _Phichit you can't help yourself when it comes to this kind of stuff,_ Yuuri smirked.

"Well, I had the powers to make his life miserable for three years, but I didn't. I decided to be professional, and the bigger person. But still, knowing that I induced fear and watching him shuffle nervously and avoid eye contact was enough for me. The best and worst people end up in medicine. I wish there's some kind of character litmus test that can be administered at the time of medical school admissions that picks out the genuinely good people from those who are FOS."

"What's FOS?" Yuuri whispered to Phichit.

"You don't know?" Phichit snorted, "only best medical acronym ever: Full of shit."

"Alright, let's go round," Celestino tapped his hands on the nursing station.

Yuuri received texts from Phichit all day containing happy faces and exclamation marks.

* * *

"How's your day?" Yuuri asked from across the dinner table on an ordinary Thursday evening.

Victor attempted to eat with Luke on his lap, giggling, and trying to grab every piece of cutlery on the table that Victor distributed in a semicircle just out of his reach. "I started saying goodbye to my patients in the clinic."

"I wish I am in your shoes," Yuuri sighed, "the goodbye part must be sad."

Victor's eyes fell, "it was, I was a part of their lives for three years. Some of them I know well, what they do for a living, what makes them tick, and their favorite hobbies. This is also why I choose to work in the outpatient clinic."

Yuuri smiled, "glad you found what you wanted to do. As for me, I have no idea yet. For now, I want residency to be over?"

Victor grinned, "time will fly faster than you think, before you know it. I have to admit I will miss my patients, Lucas, no —" he pulled a bowl out of the way just in time.

"Time doesn't like to move on night float," Yuuri grumbled.

Victor chuckled, "I know what you mean, I love these by the way." He shifted the vase filled with lilac Yuuri brought home from Luke's eager grasp, "what's the occasion?"

"Nothing," Yuuri blushed and shrugged, "I'll get you more soup." He picked up Victor's empty light blue bowl.

The doorbell rang.

"Hi Mila," Yuuri opened the door. "Have a seat, we have plenty of food," the extra set of cutlery and plate already waited for her on the table.

"You know I'll never say no to your food, even if I am already stuffed," she grinned, glowing since the publishers accepted her debut novel she wrote while watching Luke. Mila insisted on keeping Luke company every Thursday evening to allow Yuuri and Victor time to themselves.

"Mila!" Luke squealed with excitement.

* * *

They choose a bench by the boardwalk next to the ocean. The orange street lamp flickered in the distance.

The soft breeze of June in their hair.

Victor nestled his head against Yuuri's shoulder, his starlight locks a stark contrast to Yuuri's navy blue shirt, the same shade as the night sky.

"So, what's the biggest thing residency taught you?" Victor played with Yuuri's hand.

"Growing a thick skin," Yuuri chuckled, "and giving zero fucks about what others think of me."

Victor laughed, "Agreed."

"I don't care if the ICU fellow or some other attending think I am an idiot for calling them, as long as patients are being taken care of, that's all that mattered." Yuuri wrapped a protective arm around Victor.

"I found it liberating, growing that thick skin. I used to have trouble saying no. As soon as residency kicked in, I would say no left and right without blink of an eye. I think sometimes, did I turn meaner?"

"Not meaner," Yuuri pressed his lips together, "more assertive."

"Ah," Victor squeezed his hand and laughed, "I like that."

They watched the familiar constellations overhead with fingers intertwined and enjoyed the silent warmth.

Yuuri's heart thumped within his chest.

"What are you thinking right now?" Victor read his restlessness like an open book. He leaned forward on the bench, blue-green eyes transfixed up on Yuuri's expression.

Yuuri's squeezed the ring in the center of his palm he had been fiddling with all night, "I have something for you," he blushed.

The corners of Victor's lips curled up.

"You are the first person I wanted to hold onto. Not just you, Lucas too." _What if he says no? What if he isn't ready? He was on three antidepressants when I first met him? Is it too soon? What if he is afraid of commitment?_ Yuuri shook those thoughts away, and with all of his courage, he opened his hand, "Victor, will you wear this for me?"

Victor clasped his mouth, at loss for words.

Time slipped to irrelevance other than the rapid beating of Yuuri's heart.

Victor's eyes glistened, his cheeks a hint of red, he nodded and a hot drop of crystalline tear rolled down his silver lashes onto Yuuri's hand.

Yuuri flashed the most beautiful smile Victor had ever seen.

With trembling hands, Yuuri picked up the ring and slid it onto Victor's fourth finger.

Victor brought the golden ring to his lips and kissed it, "it's perfect."

Yuuri pulled him close, "no you are." _I love the way you look when you wake up dishevelled; I love the way you cursed; the way your patients looked at you; the way you love your job (despite the residency part); the way you craved coffee like a fiend in the mornings; I love every imperfect lines on your face, and when you laugh at stupid things like an idiot; Most of all, I love the way you showed me hope, even if when I couldn't see it._

Victor buried his face into Yuuri's shoulder as they listened to the ocean waves crashing on to the shore.

With their arms around each other, they walked home to the beginning of a new chapter.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **For a more complete collection of my work, please see my ao3 account with the same user name.**

I am in the final days of residency, this is surreal!

Saying goodbye to my patients was sad though. I saw some of their kids since they were 5 days old and now they are turning three. This is what made me choose my specialty in the first place, to get to know people, their stories, to serve, and to become a part of their lives.

I will miss my colleagues too. I am incredibly grateful to be in a program where we support each other like a big family.

Anyways, I am ready to close this chapter. Seven years was a long time.

Epilogue to follow.

Much love,

-A

* * *

re: reviews

TOSoldtimer: Thanks for reading and for your kind words. Hope you are doing much better now. Being hospitalized must've been a difficult experience.

MissMJS: thanks so much, hope you enjoy this one! Ahh this story has one more chapter, can't believe it's almost been a year.

Suma Akila: I couldn't read what you wrote, but thanks for reading!

KisunaFuji: he sure did!


	11. Chapter 11: There Is

**Interns.**

Phichit's text accompanied by the vibration on Yuuri's phone while he added a packet of brown sugar into the liquid elixir of wakefulness.

 **Interns.** Yuuri texted back.

 **You ready?**

 **There's no such thing as ready.** Yuuri stirred inhaling the aroma, his cells waking up one by one.

 **We don't have to write notes anymore!**

 **If your intern can write them fast enough...** Yuuri picked up a plastic cap and a sleeve over the green paper cup.

 **More importantly are you ready for this weekend?** Phichit ignored him being skeptical.

 **Looking forward to it.**

 **Well, I can't wait! Btw I can tell when you didn't drink your morning coffee, you are much crankier.** Phichit read his mind.

 **You are currently keeping me from my coffee. Get back to work :p.**

Yuuri handed his ID card to the cashier in the cafeteria to pay for his coffee while grinning from cheek to cheek.

* * *

 **Can you come to see this patient with me?**

 **Sure.** Yuuri texted the new intern back as he peeled the plastic part of the cafeteria coffee cup and snapped it back. The aroma of the world's most mediocre coffee brought life back to him like a neglected plant given water.

"I was paged because the nurse found bugs on him, she put some in the specimen jar," Leo avoided Yuuri's gaze, wiping his clammy palms on the stiff, pristine white coat, "I wanted you to look at it with me."

Yuuri pulled open the metal drawer of the isolation cart and handed a yellow gown to Leo.

"Can you put in the order for permethrin cream?" Sara, the nurse taking care of this patient, mentioned in passing.

"Um sure," Leo fumbled with the strings of the isolation gown.

"What do you think?" Yuuri picked up the bug at the bottom of the specimen jar with a gloved hand.

"Lice?" Leo glanced at the homeless patient now cleanly shaven.

"Yea, order the permethrin cream," Yuuri took off his gloves.

"I have so much respect for nurses," Leo rumpled his isolation gown and stepped on the dispenser.

"I do too. By the way, we are rounding with Baranovskaya today, she likes to pimp interns about hyponatremia," Yuuri warned Leo.

"Good to know, I'll skim the flowchart before rounds," Leo flashed a sleepy smile and resumed walking at intern speed.

Yuuri grabbed the coffee hidden behind a computer at the nursing station, happy that the unit clerk who grew a habit of walking all over residents didn't see him and took the second sip.

He carried out rounding on the patients as his interns scrambled to write notes. He knew the best places to hide coffee on each floor.

The next patient's son showed up in scrubs and his 'attending physician badge'.

His wife pushed up her dark horn-rimmed glasses, "are you an intern?" She sat up.

"The resident," Yuuri stood on by the elderly pleasantly confused patient's bedside, "good morning."

"Well, my husband is a famous interventional cardiologist, Dr. Richard Warren, I'll have you notify the attending that his mother here is a VIP patient."

 _Richard Warren huh, never heard of him._ Yuuri pasted on a fake smile as he updated his 'famous' colleague on his mother. _We treat all of our patients the same, like VIP patients._ Yuuri rolled his eyes as he exited the room as Chris, the nurse and Victor's friend, snorted in silent laughter.

 _Fuck it,_ intentionally saving his coffee at first, he downed the rest of it. _I need an IV caffeine drip._ He walked briskly to the elevator.

 _Perfect, nobody else is in the elevator,_ Yuuri grinned. Then from the corner of his eyes, he caught a glimpse of the biggest suck-up in his residency program wearing his hideous orange bow-tie. Yuuri shuddered thinking about his colleague cutting up food for the patient only in front of the attending.

His hand flew to the button that closed the door before the gunner had a chance to accelerate his footsteps. _Success._ Yuuri smirked. _Did residency turn me into an asshole?_ Shaking his head, he decided the jerk who threw every other resident under the bus deserved it.

On the next floor, he walked into the room of a patient who could barely speak full sentences yesterday.

"Dr. Katsuki, you have to listen to my lungs!" She exclaimed, "I feel so much better." The patient swung her legs over the bed.

Yuuri grinned, "I'm glad." He places the stethoscope on her back, "looks like your wheezing is much improved."

"You know, I have been thinking about our conversation yesterday. I've got two kids at home and I really can't be in and out of the hospital all this time. I am going to quit smoking."

"Great, let me know if there is anything we can do to help. Let's watch your breathing till this afternoon, we'll see how you do then, maybe we can discharge you."

"Sounds good, thank you. I wanted to let you know, you are all wonderful doctors, and the nurses here are kind too," the patient's hand gripped the bed railing.

"I'm glad, being hospitalized can be a stressful experience, it's the least we can do."

"Can I have some water?"

"Sure, I'll grab it for you right away."

* * *

Victor downed his last gulp of coffee from the mom-and-pop-type shop down the street and dialed the phone, "this is Dr. Nikiforov returning your call."

"You won't believe what happened, doc, I opened my medicine cabinet yesterday and I dropped my bottle of oxycodone into the toilet."

"What about your heart and thyroid medication?"

"Oh I still have those."

Victor buried his face in his hands, "could you please give me a second to open your chart?"

Instead, he logged into the database that tracked every prescribed controlled substance that could potentially be addictive.

He sighed inside, "when did you say you lost your oxycodone?"

"Yesterday sir."

"The records show you picked up a prescription from another doctor this morning."

Silence.

"I meant it was this morning, I dropped it in the toilet this morning. You know what? I am getting a new doctor. None of you understand my pain," she slammed the phone.

Victor's forehead rested on the table, it's only 8:15 am. His first patient didn't show up to the appointment, which gave him a head start on phone calls to return.

He reached the top of the pile of paperwork he needed to sign.

"Your first patient is ready," his medical assistant knocked.

"Thanks," Victor picked up the laptop.

"Hi Dr. N!" The middle-aged man beamed, "good to see you."

"Likewise, you look great, what can I do for you today?" Victor shook his hand.

"Well, here for the annual physical, you know because the wife insisted. No complaints."

"Sounds good."

They chatted about sports, the patient's recent vacation to Florence and Rome for a few minutes.

* * *

"So, your next patient wants you to fill in his disability form for parking. He said he sprained his right ankle six months ago and walked in here without even a limp," Georgi the medical assistant cast Victor a sideways glance, "good luck."

Victor sighed, "here goes." He tried to empty the rest of his coffee but forgetting nothing was left.

* * *

Victor's following patient rescheduled, which bought him fifteen previous minutes to review old medical records.

 **How's attending life?** His phone glowed from Yuuri's text.

 **It's nice.** Calls are screened before they show up on my pager for one. **How are your interns?** He texted Yuuri.

 **So far so good. Sometimes I didn't feel like I was learning during intern year, but when I started teaching them, I realized I've come a long way and maybe I know a thing or two.** Yuuri replied.

 **Remember the days you were my intern? :)**

 **Of course! Best senior ever.**

 **You ready for tomorrow?**

 **I can't wait. Phichit downloaded an app that counts down to tomorrow's date since three months ago haha.**

* * *

Victor grinned as he straightened Yuuri's navy tie, "you are gorgeous."

"You should see yourself," Yuuri kissed him on the cheek and closed the car door.

They didn't want an elaborate wedding, instead, they asked the guests to donate to charities in honor of the occasion. They also requested casual attire encouraged sandals.

A small crowd gathered beneath a veranda by the ocean. Phichit wore a form-fitting dark-blue suit, and Yuuri caught him wiping his eyes on multiple occasions. The ocean wind, diluting the heat, and not a single cloud in the sky, the guests gathered around them.

"Now the couple will speak a few words," Phichit stood between Yuuri and Victor, holding Luke's hand. The two-year-old beaned in his tiny suit with a lavender tie matching his dad's. Makkachin sat on the other side of Phichit.

Luke giggled while dropping the golden rings into Phichit's open palm.

"When I was tired and felt like an imposter in a white coat that was too long," the medical part of the crowd chuckled, "you were my first senior," Yuuri began, taking both of Victor's hands in his, "you told me it gets better. I didn't believe you at first, but now I do. Residency taught me sometimes the first thing we need to learn is how to drown, and you watched over me but made me realize that I can swim back on my own. Thank you for believing in me when I didn't believe in myself." Yuuri slid the ring on Victor's fourth finger.

"Resilience is born from a place of darkness. You came into my life when I was in a dark place. When I opened up, you met me where I was. Thank you for reminding me that there is hope, even when I couldn't see it," Victor's fingertips warm against Yuuri's, the ring gleamed in the perfect day in July.

"There Is," Yuuri kissed the ring and smiled.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

I am no longer a resident!

I created this story because I wanted to write about hope.

There was a time when I was an intern, I used to go home every day and cry. One of my mentors told me back then "I believe in you". He wasn't someone with many words, I was taken aback...and that became the inspiration for chapter one.

Thank you for all of the support for the past year when I posted chapter one, I hope you'll find that my writing improved since day 1.

To aspiring doctors or anyone else along this path: parts of residency is suppose to suck, but along the way you'll find the strength, the focus, and the resilience like you never knew you had.

There Is hope.

It gets better.

Please remember to take care of yourself.

Much love & I believe in you,

-Antares

P.S. I will be posting future works on my ao3 account under AntaresPromise, see you there!


End file.
